phase as an artist, was Anton Mauve, himself an eminent artist. Mauvehad married into the Van Gogh family so he was not only known to vanGogh as someone who knew much more about art than he, but as some-one who might also be more readily available as a teacher because of thefamily connection. So from Mauve he learned basic skills and technique,especially in drawing and water-coloring. He wrote to Theo about:a drawing . . . made at Mauve’s studio, and really the best watercolorI had, especially because Mauve had put some touches in it, and hadwatched me make it and drawn my attention to some points. (Stone,p. 135)ThereweremanyotherartistswhomvanGoghlookedupto:Leonardoda Vinci, from whom he learned how to sequence his early learning–drawing, perspective, understanding the proportions of an object, copy-ing from a master, and so on; what he learned from da Vinci, becamepart of van Gogh’s organization of knowledge (Gruber, 1989). He learnedfrom Rembrandt (especially chiaroscuro); and from Gauguin whose im-pasto technique (the thick application of paint), he admired and used.In Daumier, he found confirmation of his love of depicting the commonperson. From Millet he found inspiration, and copied and later paintedcopies of Millet’s work. From the Japanese artist Hokusai, he learned touse line in dynamic ways. Van Gogh’s admiration of Rembrandt and Milletwent beyond composition and technique; the emotions expressed by thesepainters’ works also provided a model for what van Gogh wanted to ex-press emotionally in his own works. He knew the work of all these artistsand knew he needed their knowledge by gauging what they had that hewanted to emulate in his own work in his own way.Sometimes, the variety and many-layered impact of such figuressurely included a process of “trying-on” the actual work of the admiredartist by copying, or drawing or paintingin the manner ofthat person. Thisis both an attempt at mastery as well as a testing out of what it feels like to“be” that artist. It may provide a special experience in artistic developmentthat enables the person to learn from and assimilate these new knowledgeexperiences selectively.Apart from copying them, van Gogh routinely looked at and ana-lyzed the works of great artists. In Paris he often visited the Louvre andconstantly went to exhibitions showing the work of contemporary artists.While Gauguin was in Arles, van Gogh and he regularly visited nearbymuseums to see and discuss the art of others. This, of course, is a commonactivity among nearly all creative people—the need to re-view existingproducts in their field to learn or re-learn; and the need to compare theirown work with that of their contemporaries

 painted three more large canvases. They are vast stretches of wheatunder troubled skies, and I didn’t have to put myself out very much inorder to try and express sadness and extreme loneliness. (NYGS, 1978,Letter 649 c.10 July, 1890.)Van Gogh shot and wounded himself among those wheat fields onJuly 27, 1890. Theo was summoned and his brother seemed to be improvingwhen he fell into a coma and died in Theo’s presence on July 29.4VAN GOGH’S SOCIAL INTERACTIONSAND 

COMPARISONSAt

 the beginning of this chapter I introduced social comparison theoryand three of its constructs—upward comparison, downward comparison,and lateral comparison. I now want to consider how these comparisoncategories can be applied to van Gogh’s development as an artist and aperson.Upward Social ComparisonOne does not have to know the people one compares oneself with;indeed, they can be distant strangers or long dead. Nevertheless, it is clearthat van Gogh’s years as a fully committed artist were richly populatedwith other artists and members of the art world. In a letter to Theo, vanGogh asked how anyone can learn if no-one shows the way. With all thebest intentions in the world, one cannot succeed without coming intocontact with artists who are more advanced. (NYGS, 1978, Letter 138,November, 1980.)This letter expresses the need for knowledge of a neophyte. Actually,van Gogh was not exactly such a neophyte since, as in many respects anautodidact, he had been sketching for many years on his own. He ad-mired many artists, some of whom became important influences at dif-ferent points in his own development. The first of these, in his formative4It is important to remember that the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, and Neo-Impressionists are considered as groups, as if the work in each group was somehow thesame. In fact, members in each group had in common only that they lived and worked atabout the same and applied a novel set of principles to their work. But each member of eachgroup had a unique voice and style and when we see or think of the work of van Gogh,Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Bonnard—all post-impressionists—it is their differencesthat strike us rather than their similarities

 These are the comments of a keen objective intelligence; and theyreflect van Gogh the painter as well: combining dispassionate observationand analysis with the emotional expression of subjective experience.Van Gogh produced many masterpieces at this time. Sadly, he had an-other attack in July and could not return to work until August. By Septem-ber he was more cheerful and wrote to Theo:My work is going very well, I am finding things that I have sought invain for years, and feeling this, I am always thinking of that saying ofDelacroix’s that you know, namely that he discovered painting whenhe no longer had any breath or teeth left. (NYGS, 1978, Letter 605, 10September 1889.)At this point, his skills were such that he could rapidly produce arendition of a work in the style of Delacroix. He wrote “if you could see meworking, my brain so clear and my fingers so sure that I have drawn that‘Pieta’ by Delacroix without taking a single measurement” (Letter 605, 10September 1889).Theo sent his brother reproductions of paintings by Rembrandt, Milletand Delacroix, which Vincent used as the basis for his own work, no longercopying but “painting” them. During this period he produced some of hisfinest painting. The image of the miner was still perhaps a central one forvan Gogh; but it now took on a different guise in view of his own illnessso that he saw himself “like a miner who is always in danger [and] makeshaste in what he does.” (NYGS, 1978, Letter 610, 1889).In December of 1889, van Gogh had another attack followed by stillanother in January of 1990 and a third a few weeks later. During his lastweek in Saint R ́emy, he finished four still lifes with flowers. He had alreadytold Theo that he wanted to move to Auvers. In Saint R ́emy, where he hadlived for a year, he was overwhelmed by “boredom and grief” (de Leeuw,1997, p. 485). He went to Auvers-sur-Oise via Paris because he wanted tomeet his new sister-in-law who had recently married Theo, as well as theirson, named after Vincent. Johanna van Gogh was surprised to see not a sickman but a “sturdy broad-shouldered man, with a healthy colour, a smile onhis face and a very resolute appearance” (de Leeuw, 1997, p. 488). Van Goghwas very happy to see Theo and Theo’s family but he worried about hisbrother’s chronic cough. He left Paris after three days and went to Auverswhere he was put in the care of Dr. Gachet, a psychiatrist, homeopathicphysician and amateur artist.Van Gogh’s output during what would be the last two months of hislife was remarkable. In July, he wrote to Theo:

 SAINT-R ́EMY AND AUVERS-SUR-OISE

 Van Gogh closed out the final 14 months of his life in St. R ́emy, wherehe lived in a mental institution, being treated for seizures, and in Auvers-sur-Oise, where he was in the care of Dr. Paul Gachet. At the mental hospitalin Saint R ́emy, he continued to paint, except when he was having an attack.He never worked during such episodes and never put brush to canvas untilhe was completely recovered. Since there were plenty of empty rooms inthe asylum, he was given an additional room in which to work. In May,1889, he wrote Theo that “myfearof madness is wearing off markedly.”In the same letter, he takes comfort from what he learns and sees in theasylum:I am so grateful for yet another thing. I’ve noticed that others, too,hear sounds and strange voices during their attacks, as I did, and thatthings seemed to change before their very eyes. And that lessened thehorror with which I remembered my first attack, something that, whenit comes upon you unexpectedly, cannot but frighten you terribly. Onceyou know it is part of the illness, you accept it like anything else (NYGS,1978, Letter 592, 22 May, 1889)

 Vincent apparently had had some kind of a seizure or psychoticepisode. Allegedly, he seemed dazed and bewildered, and perhaps drunk,when he appeared at the brothel. The injury to his ear had severed an artery.He returned home and the police, summoned by people at the brothel,found him in bed the next morning. He had lost an enormous amount ofblood.Van Gogh recovered gradually. His depression about what had hap-pened and his fear of another attack weighed on him. But he soon discov-ered that he had not lost his passion for painting and began to paint againin March of 1889. He conjectured that his “attack” may have been broughton by alcohol and even tobacco, but he continued to drink and smoke. Heseemed unable to organize his life and reluctant to set up a studio by him-self. He had lost a lot of his work as a result of floods and damp while hewas in the hospital. He also believed that the loss of his studio, Gauguin’sdeparture, and the end of his ideas of collaborative work with others werehis fault. Theo was worried about his brother’s feelings of guilt and inad-equacy and the possibility of suicide. He constantly tried to reassure himand pointed out that he, Theo, had had a very good year and money wasnot a problem. Vincent considered admitting himself to an asylum, in thehope that further attacks might be prevented.

 the painting fully worked out before touching the canvas, emphasizingmemory and its imaginative translation to the canvas. Van Gogh, the real-ist, liked to work “from nature”—the scene in front of him. He also believedthat colors should have psychological significance, and not merely play adecorative role in a painting. Gauguin believed in working slowly and de-liberately; van Gogh believed in going to the main theme of the paintingand working with an exalted rapidity.3Gauguin painted a portrait of Vin-cent to which the latter had a violently negative response “It’s certainlyme but me gone mad” (de Leeuw, 1997, p. 423). A week later, after a loudargument in a caf ́e, van Gogh allegedly threw a glass of absinthe at Gau-guin, an incident that was apparently smoothed over but not forgotten. Ina letter written to Theo in the latter half of December, which included avivid description of a gallery he and Gauguin had visited in Montpelier,van Gogh wrote:Gauguin and I discuss Delacroix, Rembrandt, etc., a great deal. Thedebate isexceedingly electricand sometimes when we finish our mindsare as drained as an electric battery after discharge. (NYGS, 1978, Letter564.)On December 23, van Gogh writes again to Theo, this time a muchbriefer letter:I think that Gauguin was a little disenchanted with the good town ofArles . . . and above all with me...Indeed, there are serious problems toovercome here still, for him as well as for me...Butthese problems liemore in ourselves than anywhere else. In short I think that he’ll eithersimply leave or he’ll simply stay. I’ve told him to think it over andweigh up the pros and cons before doing anything. Gauguin is verystrong, very creative...Iawait his decision with absolute equanimity(NYGS, 1978, Letter 565, 23 December, 1888).This very calm and rational letter was followed the same evening byan emotionally quite different event. Gauguin was taking a walk whenvan Gogh suddenly appeared and threatened him with a razor. Gauguincalmed him down, but decided to stay the night in a local hotel. Later thatnight, van Gogh appeared at the brothel he frequented and asked for aprostitute called Rachel. He gave her a piece of his earlobe which he hadsliced from his ear and asked her to look after it. Police found him the nextmorning unconscious in his bed. This account comes mainly from Gauguinand also, “bit by bit” from van Gogh. (de Leeuw, 1997, pp. 425–426).3Indeed, while he was in Arles, van Gogh painted as many as three paintings a day, some inas little as 45 minutes, according to his accounts; in Paris his swift execution had amazedhis teachers and fellow students

 cooperative of impressionists was ever on van Gogh’s mind. It crops upin letters to Theo, to his fellow artists and to his sister Wil, whether he ismentioning that he had just read a book on the German composer RichardWagner and was interested that Wagner’s ideas about “community” wereso consonant with his own, or complaining of the low social and economicstatus of painters. To Wil he wrote:We live in an unspeakably awful and miserable world for artists. Theexhibitions, the shops selling pictures, everything, everything is in thehands of people who grab all the money. (de Leeuw, 1997, p. 367.)At the same time, these letters are also full of his work—descriptions ofhis paintings, the colors he is using for the various objects, his evaluationof them, his ideas about them and broader artistic issues. He describespainting in the midday heat, how to protect one’s easel from being blownover by the famousmistral(as the seasonal wind is called), how differenthe looked now compared to the man he depicted in a self-portrait he hadpainted in Paris. Everywhere, in these letters, his passion for art is ondisplayAt the end of June 1888, Theo wrote to Vincent that Gauguin had fi-nally agreed to come to Arles and share a house with Vincent. It was notuntil several months later—in October—that Gauguin actually arrived.On October 3rd, 1888 van Gogh wrote to Gauguin and told him how as heworked he had still been thinking of the two of them “setting up a studio”together (de Leeuw, 1997, p. 412). He also said that he was working fever-ishly. Indeed, he was worn out and forced to rest for a few days. Eventually,the intense pace of his activities in summer and autumn exhausted him somuch that “he felt he was ‘reduced once more close to the deranged stateof Hugo van der Goes in the painting by ́Emile Wauters’” (de Leeuw, 1997,p. 416). Considering what was to come, this remark was prescient.Gauguin eventually arrived on October 23. He stayed exactly nineweeks. In a letter to Theo, Vincent seemed weighed down by his debt tohis brother and by the fact that his paintings were not selling. He notedthat Gauguin’s arrival had turned his mind away from the feeling that hewas going to be ill.At first the two painters worked well together. They painted the samelocal people, spent evenings out together in a cafe, went to a local brotheltogether and, under Gauguin’s influence, van Gogh even painted someworks from memory. But there were fundamental differences between thetwo, and they argued endlessly and disagreed about basic issues in art andthe functioning and purposes of the artist. Each had very strong opinionsabout how the artist should work. Gauguin believed that a work shouldbe conceived as a whole before it was begun and he advised others to have

 ill. He saw Gauguin as both a friend and a symbol for the artist’s life ofsacrifice and ill-health. He believed that he had a responsibility to help hisfriend regain his health; all the more reason, in Van Gogh’s mind, to haveGauguin come to Arles. He went on, in the same letter:Poor Gauguin has no luck. I am very much afraid that in his case con-valescence will be even longer, and I am heartily sorry for his plight,especially now that his health is shaken. He hasn’t the kind of temper-ament that profits by hardships; on the contrary, this will only knockhim up, and that will spoil him for his work. My God! Shall we see ageneration of artists with healthy bodies? (Stone, 1937, p. 332.)Van Gogh continued to think about having Gauguin come and livewith him. He convinced Theo to send money to help Gauguin in Paris.The ever-supportive Theo was thus not only sending money to Vincentbut now also to Gauguin. In the summer of 1888, van Gogh wrote to hisbrother:I have had a letter from Gauguin who says he has got from you aletter enclosing fifty francs, which touched him greatly. He seems tobe very depressed . . . he readily agrees to the advantages there wouldbe in living together...Ithink a society of impressionists could becreated, and while it lasted we could live courageously and produce,and that the gains as well as the losses should be taken in common. Iam hoping to maintain my argument of last winter, when we talkedof an association of artists...The great revolution: art for the artists!(Stone, 1937, pp. 350–351.)Van Gogh dreamed of an artists’ colony where ideas and art couldflourish. Although he fervently hoped Gauguin would come, he also didnot want to pressure him to move if Gauguin really hoped to do somethingbetter in Paris. Van Gogh wanted companionship for artistic, spiritual,and practical reasons. The cost of keeping a household could be defrayedby sharing those costs with another person.2He had always thought it“idiotic” for a painter to live alone and, in practical terms, the money hespent could stretch to profit someone else. There would be satisfaction insharing the daily chores and keeping two or three people going instead ofone. All this would serve as the beginning of an association in which thecollective would manage and sell their own work rather than putting it allinto the hands of unscrupulous dealers. The plan to establish a painters’2Van Gogh also liked women and would have liked to live with a woman he loved. Based onprevious failed relationships, however, he believed that he was unsuited to meet the needsof a woman, not to mention the fact that such an arrangement would have interfered withhis ideas of an artists’ colony.

sun-lit countryside, and felt his health deteriorating in Paris. In a letter tohissisterWil,hesaidthewinterinParswastoosevereand,later,thathewasworn out by Paris. Another reason to go to Arles was its pristine naturalenvironment, in contrast to Paris. The Paris scene had become somewhatstale. Arles represented a new field of artistic action.Van Gogh kept in touch with ́Emile Bernard through Theo. Bernardwas close to Paul Gauguin, who was also in bad health and short of money.Van Gogh then had the idea of establishing a colony where artists wouldlive and work together and exchange ideas and techniques. The colonywould be different from existing schools in that the artists would teach eachother and be free of the influence of academic strictures and art dealers.It would create a new method of working and a new life style for theartist. Van Gogh strongly believed in learning from but also breaking withtradition. He suggested that Theo and Tersteeg become the “experts” inthis enterprise, lending it credence and investing capital in it and, in return,would each year be given a certain number of paintings with a certain valueby the artist members of the cooperative. Paul Gauguin would become thehead of the colony and Theo would be a kind of administrative coordinator.VanGoghhadbeenimpressedartisticallyandpersonallybyGauguinwhenthey known each other in Paris. He saw his dream of establishing an artist’scolony as beginning with a cooperative working with Gauguin in Arles.Van Gogh exchanged letters, works of art and ideas with potentialcollaborators. He also concentrated on developing his skills as an artist.During the day, he worked on drawings and paintings—landscapes, stilllifes, and portraits—and in the evening he wrote letters to collaborators.He worked as few have worked—hard and fast. During the 15 monthshe was in Arles, just 444 days, he produced over 200 paintings and over100 drawings, demonstrating that, for him, being creative meant intense,protracted activity. Mastery was arduous and continuous. Van Gogh wascritical of his own work and did not often consider his paintings good byhis own standards. However, he came to believe that the paintings finishedquickly, in one long session, were his best. He declared that while he mighthave completed them very fast, he had given them a lot of thought beforeputting brush to paper (de Leeuw, 1997, p. 373).Van Gogh had met Gauguin in Paris and the two had remained incontact. Theo was Gauguin’s art dealer and in February, 1888, Vincentwrote to Theo “I have had a letter from Gauguin telling me that he hasbeen in bed for a fortnight; that he is on the rocks, as he has had to paysome crying debts and wants to know if you have sold anything for him;he is so pressed for a little money that he would be ready to reduce theprice of his pictures still further (Stone, 1937, p. 331.) Van Gogh empathizedand sympathized with Gauguin’s reports of his ill health; he too had been

 PARISThe ten years of van Gogh’s life as a committed artist can be dividedneatly into two periods: from 1880 until 1885 when he worked and livedmostly in Holland, and from 1886–1890 when he lived and worked inFrance, where he died. From 1886–1888, he and Theo shared an apartmentin Paris and there was no need for any correspondence. In the absenceof any letters, we have only indirect knowledge of a somewhat turbulentperiod (de Leeuw, 1997, p. 325).Van Gogh arrived in Paris at a time of some dissatisfaction with hisown work, centering on his use of color, which he considered too lim-ited, too dark, and too morose. He believed that he had gone as far as hewanted to in the use of dark colors and chiaroscuro and the extension of theprinciples of the Dutch school, represented by Rembrandt and Hals. Theohad described the experimental work of the Impressionists to Vincent andVincent was curios to see what these people were doing. As an art dealer,Theo had personal contact with the leading Parisian artists of the day,and was able to introduce them to Vincent. Van Gogh had come to Paristo join the Corman atelier and learn what he could. There he met ́EmileBernard (with whom he established an extended collaboration), Toulouse-Lautrec, and the Australian John Peter Russell. He also met Paul Signac,with whom he exchanged ideas regarding technique, and compared anddiscussed each other’s work. Together, they worked out a system in whichvarious techniques were coded and designed to represent different sur-faces or objects. Dots, for example, represented objects such as roads, treesor water near the horizon. Undulating lines represented turbulent skies orswirling water in the foreground. Dashes represented mid-distance objects,such as a road midway between the foreground and the horizon.As de Leeuw (1997) points out, van Gogh must have been amazed,when he came to Paris, to see how out of touch his own method of work-ing was with that of his leading contemporaries. He adopted the colortheories of the Impressionists and also changed the subject matter of hiswork, painting the streets and caf ́es that surrounded him. His Paris sojournbecame “a new term of apprenticeship” (p. 327).ARLESThe Arles period (December 1887–December 1888) was punctuatedby the two-month period, November and December 1888, when he andPaul Gauguin lived and worked together.In February of 1888, van Gogh left Paris for Arles, a relatively smalltown in Provence in southern France. He longed for sun and warmth, for

 Van Gogh also realized the limitations of following the dictates of a sin-gle other artist and he explained to Theo that, while he was fond of Mauveand liked his work very much, he did not want to confine himself to theschool that Mauve represented, or any one school for that matter. Through-out his development, van Gogh copied, translated and used the works ofothers as the basis for formulating his own style. In 1880 he had written thathe believed copying good art was a good foundation for an artist’s work.Mauve was important to van Gogh in many ways. He helped himfinancially to set up a studio in The Hague. He taught him how to draw andshowed him the treatment of diverse media, including crayons and watercolor. He oriented van Gogh to the Barbizon school, a group of painterswho emphasized earth colors and an interest in working with peasants assubject matter.In the first years of his artistic work, devoted to drawing, van Goghoften included his drawings in his letters to Theo, commenting on them andcritiquing them. He was very well read and had already studied da Vinci’sNotebooks(Richter, 1952). Quite systematically, he followed the sequentialsteps that da Vinci had advised a young artist to follow. These were: toestablish a competence for drawing; to learn perspective; to understand theproportions of objects; to copy from a master (which van Gogh had beendoing for some years); to study drawing and painting nature; to observeand analyze the works of masters; and, finally, to practice and re-work aconcept again and again.It appears that van Gogh not only took da Vinci’s advice to heart butdiligently and continuously applied the latter’s precepts to his work. DaVinci’s advice provided a stable framework within which van Gogh coulddevelop multiple competencies, and experiment judiciously. “Drawing isthe backbone of painting” was a credo often voiced by him. As alreadymentioned, he devoted the first two years of the ten-year period entirely todrawing in order to be competent in that skill before taking on the arduoustask of mastering oil painting. His goal was to be good enough at drawingso that it would be as easy as writing. He had already read books presentingtraditional applications of perspective theory, including Albrecht D ̈urer’sdiscourse on that subject, first published in 1525. It was from D ̈urer that vanGogh got the idea of using a perspective frame—a device that allowed theartisttocomparetheproportionsofanearbyobjectwiththoseofamoredis-tant one. He had also often copied the works of other artists—for exampleBargue and Millet—but he now pursued this activity more purposefully.In fact he pursued all these activities more purposefully because they wereundertaken within the framework of a larger goal to which he had fullycommitted himself—that of becoming an artist. This pattern in the work ofcreative people has been identified by Gruber (1989) as the “organizationof purpose” represented in the person’s “network of enterprise.”

 Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 and died in 1890, at the age of 37.Although he had done many sketches and drawings from an early age, hewas a full-time artist for only ten years—the last ten years of his life. His ten-year career as an artist started out by anchoring to several things. He soughtthe tutelage of his renowned cousin Anton Mauve. He chose heroes fromthe art world he wanted to emulate, including Millet and Rembrandt. Heresolved to become competent in drawing before proceeding to painting.He decided to find some way to infuse his art with action and emotion.By the autumn of 1880, he had done what he could by himself. Hehad read assiduously on perspective and anatomy and studied drawingfrom borrowed books. He copied from the etchings and prints of otherartists which he had bought earlier or from ones sent to him by Theo.Of course, he now had no income and no money to pay rent, never mindbuying the materials—paper etc.—to do his work. Theo gave him financialsupport and sent him supplies, and Vincent, as ever, lived only on thebarest necessities, even more frugally than when he was a lay preacher.But he knew he had finally found his true profession and his trajectory. InSeptember, 1880, he wrote Theo:I cannot tell you how happy I am that I have taken up drawing again.I had been thinking about it for a long time, but always consideredit impossible & beyond my capabilities. But now, though I continueto be conscious of my failings & of my depressing dependence on agreat many things, now I have recovered my peace of mind & myenergy increases by the day . . . For me the object is to learn to drawwell, to gain control of my pencil, my charcoal or my brush. Once Ihave achieved that I shall be able to do good work almost anywhereand the Borinage is as picturesque as old Venice, as Arabia or Brittany,Normandy. (NYGS, Letter 136, 24 September, 1880.)Van Gogh always needed to find the support of other artists and notjust those of his own generation. He greatly respected the opinion of AntonMauve who was a leading artist in his day, as well as a cousin by marriage.He contacted Mauve and arranged for art lessons in The Hague. Van Goghlearned drawing and water coloring from Mauve. In a letter to Theo, hedescribed his dedication to this work:Drawing becomes more and more a passion with me, and it is a passionjust like that of a sailor for the sea. Mauve has now shown me a newway to make something, that is, how to paint water colours. Well, I amquite absorbed in this now and sit daubing and washing out again; inshort, I am trying to find a way. (NYGS. Letter 170, 7 January, 1882.)

 room, his descriptions of them clearly revealing his love of art. He enclosedan engraving on a religious subject as a gift to Theo—thus expressing hislove for his brother as well as his religious passion.DECISION TO BE AN ARTISTIn 1878, van Gogh secured a position as a lay minister in a coal-miningvillage in Belgium, in an area called the Borinage, having decided not topursue his formal religious studies, which would have taken another sevenyears. As was his custom, he threw himself into his work, giving away hisbelongings, living on bread and water, and taking sick miners into his ownhome. He also began sketching the miners.From the beginning he had admired and respected these members ofhis congregation and seemed to identify with them. He described them ina letter to Theo:they are intelligent and quick at their difficult work; brave andfrank . . . they are short but square-shouldered, with melancholy deep-set eyes. They are skillful at many things, and work terribly hard. Theyhave a nervous temperament—I do not mean weak, but very sensi-tive. They have an innate, deep-rooted hatred and a strong mistrustof anyone who is domineering. With miners one must have a miner’scharacter and temperament, and no pretentious pride or mastery, orone will never get along with them or gain their confidence. (NYGS,Letter 129, April 1879).Van Gogh’s relationship with his church superiors was strained. Theywere dismayed that he would not follow rules. Taking sick miners to hishome to try to nurse them back to health was against church policy. Fric-tion increased. Reprimands for his excessive zeal with the miners wentunheeded. Finally, in July of 1879, he was told that his appointment wouldnot be extended. Van Gogh moved to a neighboring village where he reada great deal and pursued his interest in drawing. He was, once again, ques-tioning the direction of his life’s work. He went home for some time to visithis parents, in spite of the bad feelings between him and his father. The lat-ter had been shocked and bitterly disappointed that Vincent had decidednot to pursue the formal study of theology and that his vocation wouldnot be passed on. He also disapproved of his son’s apparent indifferenceto earning money to support himself. After some months of soul search-ing, van Gogh decided, in the summer of 1879, to return to the Borinage.In a letter to Theo, he wrote of his chosen path in characteristically moralterms—he believed an artist’s vocation was sublime and admirable

 critical of Tersteeg, who was a pragmatic person, and had somewhat con-ventional and commercially-slanted views about what and how an artistshould paint. At Goupil, Vincent was exposed to a variety of art, and, un-der supervision, assisted in the sale of paintings, photographs, engravings,lithographs, and reproductions. Vincent worked as an apprentice until hewas 23, when he was fired for conducting himself inappropriately. Accord-ing to his superiors he would commonly and inappropriately discuss themerits of the works of art with customers and frequently talk them out ofsales. At Goupil, van Gogh learned much about art and began to develophis own moral, political, and artistic values about what was good, whatwas worthwhile, and what pandered to the lowest common denominatorof public taste.After this experience, Vincent tried various jobs, including teacher,book dealer, and lay minister. Until he was 27, in 1880, he tried out these ac-tivities in the search of a meaningful career. While he was working as an en-thusiastic book dealer in Dordrecht, Holland, a fellow lodger wrote of him:He was a singular man with a singular appearance into the bargain. Hewas well made, and had reddish hair which stood up on end; his facewas homely and covered with freckles, but changed and brightenedwonderfully when he warmed into enthusiasm, which happened oftenenough. Van Gogh proved laughter repeatedly by his attitude andbehavior—for everything he did and thought and felt, and his way ofliving, was different from that of others of his age” (Treble, 1975, p. 11).In May 1877 van Gogh left Dordrecht and went north to Amsterdam.He had decided he wanted to study theology, an idea he had been thinkingabout for some time. In Dordrecht he began to prepare for the state examthat would allow him to do so. He also set out to improve himself. Realizingthat he was impulsive, he recognized that he needed to exercise patienceand discipline, and wrote to his brother Theo:I have a lot of work to do and it is not very easy, but patience will helpme through. I hope to remember the ivy ‘which stealth on though hewears no wings’; as the ivy creeps along the walls, so the pen mustcrawl over the paper (NYGS, Letter 95, 19 May 1877).1He was referring to the writing he was required to do to preparefor his theological studies. In this same letter, he commented that therewere certain features that religion and painting had in common, such as astep-by-step process, and the considerable study time that both demanded.He told Theo about some cheap prints he had bought to hang up in his