Books: Passionate Painter

VINCENT VAN GOGH—Julius Meier-Graefe—Harcourt, Brace ($3).

Critics, the sacred geese whose panicky cackling rouses the citadel of plain men against the night attack of some threateningly new idea, are sometimes better than that. In Science, such men as J. W. N. Sullivan (TIME, Sept. 5, 1932; Oct. 23), in Art and Literature, Julius Meier-Graefe, are not so much sentries as interpreters. Bilingual, they can read the barbaric ensigns of these seeming foreigners and translate them into symbols that will not frighten the commonest sense. Interpreter Meier-Graefe's biography of crazy Painter van Gogh is known already to a few U. S. readers (the Medici Society, London, first published it in a limited de luxe edition, 1922). Significant of the increased interest in left-wing artists and writers is this revised translation, sponsored by the Literary Guild. An artist in his own right, Biographer Meier-Graefe has fused van Gogh's letters into a narrative that reads at times like a Dostoyevsky novel, that has the advantage over other novels-about-artists in that it can show (in 61 plates at the end) at least a black-&-white image of its hero's wildly colored achievement.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was a Dutch parson's son. An unattractive, awkward, violent young man, he wanted to go into the Church, but was too modest. Instead he carried with him, first into the polite world of the art business, then into garrets, brothels and studios, the wild religious longings that never left him. His only friend was his younger brother Theo. Together, before they went out into the world, they swore "to strive all their lives only for good." Vincent's family was connected with the Dutch branch of Goupil et Cie., famous Paris art dealers, and both Vincent and Theo got jobs in the business. Theo did well from the start, but Vincent took it, like everything else, too hard. Fired from his job, he plucked up enough conceit to enter the Church as a lay-reader, got himself sent to a squalid hole in Belgium as a missionary. There too he went too far, scandalized the churchly authorities by giving away his money, his clothes, his bed. Fired again, he stayed on with his poor people, began to draw them and send his sketches to Brother Theo. A draughtsman in a Brussels garret taught him the laws of perspective; the rest he learned for himself.

His affairs with women were invariably unhappy. For one thing, his appearance was against him. His first inamorata turned out to be otherwise engaged. The second could not stand the sight of him. Then he took up with a pregnant prostitute. But he learned to do without love; he had a presentiment that his time was short, and he had the long road of art to travel. He went to Paris, where he lived with Theo, painted furiously and tried to become like the Impressionists, whom he reverenced. But it was against his grain. Suddenly he left Paris, went off to Aries to work by himself. Eight months later Gauguin joined him.