Saving Vincent, A Novel of Jo van Gogh, is based on a true story. Jo van Gogh, a timid widow, takes on the male-dominated art elite to save her brother-in-law Vincent’s art from obscurity. She must prove that the hundreds of worthless paintings she inherited are world-class to ensure her young son will have an inheritance.
Stamping My Passport, Stamping My Soul: Researching Van Gogh in Europe
I have a travel bug.
Before I retired to become an author, my corporate career included the wonderful benefit of overseas travel. I’ve hosted groups to some far-flung destinations, like Hong Kong’s exotic cityscape, the remote Machu Picchu mountaintop in Peru and twenty-eight other journeys.
So, when I left behind getting my passport stamped through corporate travel, it didn’t take long for my husband and I to miss packing our suitcases. In 2019, we decided to plan our own European trip. We’d pop into countries on his list, Spain and Portugal, and then switch to France and the Netherlands for me.
Yes, I was still a tourist, but this time I had an agenda: to trace the whereabouts of my novel’s main characters—Jo van Gogh (the woman who saved Van Gogh from obscurity) and Vincent van Gogh, the famous artist—for I’d heard from author friends of what a difference it could make to actually walk the streets and meander the hills around the places these real people once lived.
Jo van Gogh
Prior to the trip, I’d done primary research for my book. I read two collections of letters: the 101-letter correspondence between Jo and her then fiancé Theo, and the 900-letter correspondence between Vincent and Theo, plus a few others.
That six-volume collection of Vincent’s letters came from the Van Gogh Museum, given to me as a Christmas gift from my husband. At ten letters a day, it took me months!
But by the end of it all, I felt like I’d explored a treasure trove of Jo and Vincent’s innermost thoughts, hopes and dreams. As a researcher, I felt prepped and primed.
Little did I know it was only the beginning.
Ah-ha Moment in Arles
The first of many ah-ha moments grabbed me in the south of France. Upon arrival here’s what I knew:
In February 1888, Vincent moved from Paris to the small town of Arles where he hoped to attract other artists and form an artist community. Arles proved to be a bittersweet stay for Vincent.
Van Gogh fans will be familiar with the series of six Sunflower paintings he did while there as well as The Starry Night and Starry Night over the Rhône. He painted several self-portraits as well as portraits of local people, such as a postman, the postman’s wife and children, a gendarme, and The Zuave (soldier).
I’d wondered about this set of particular people. Why hadn’t he painted field laborers as he had in earlier paintings?
Van Gogh had a tough time in Arles. Scruffy, smelly, bedraggled—he looked suspicious. And he acted weirdly, nothing like the local hardworking townspeople. Instead of holding down a “normal” job, he lugged canvases and a paint box under his arm out into the countryside each day, only to return in the evening sunburned and exhausted, collapsing into the corner of a café, subsisting on cigars and beer and bread.
Wary, townspeople gossiped.
They were not surprised when Vincent suffered a breakdown.
Before leaving on the trip, I’d read about Vincent’s neurosis in Arles. One tragic night he fought with Paul Gauguin and cut off part of his ear before collapsing unconscious. The police admitted him to a local hospital. After a few days’ care he was released only to find out that the local Arlesienne had circulated a petition to keep him from moving back.
Forced to leave, Vincent then checked into an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence about 25 kilometers away, living there for a year where he suffered more mental health episodes until finally recovering and heading back north.
So, I’m remembering this info in July 2019 walking Arles’ streets with my husband We stop for a coffee recalling Van Gogh’s The Night Café scene. We walk along the riverbanks of the Rhône. And we drive around the countryside gazing at the same rolling Alpilles mountain range Vincent captured.
That’s when I notice something odd.
Signage.
Along both the rural roads and highways are typical signs naming upcoming towns, but instead of a single name, there are two. The current French name and a second similar name below it, smaller, spelled a little differently and in italics.
You know how once you notice something, you see it everywhere? Again and again, two names instead of one.
It makes me curious.
So, at a stop in a café in my ragged French I ask our server why the signs have two names.
“En Français et l’autre in Provençale dialecte."
One in French and the other in Provençal dialect.
Of course.
Just like that, it clicked.
I recall from Vincent’s letters to Theo how lonely he was in Arles. He spoke Parisian French, not the local dialect. So, the few people he could speak with in Arles were those who had official government jobs and would speak Parisian—the postman, the gendarme, the soldier—no wonder they posed for him. They could communicate.
No doubt the postman arranged for Vincent to paint his wife and child too.
I feel a pang. Vincent was lonely. In sharp contrast to his late-night debates with artist friends like Émile Bernard and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin in noisy Parisian cafés, Vincent now spent most of his time in solitude.
Not to be dismissive of mental health at all, but I kinda think I would go a little crazy, become a bit depressed, too, if I could barely talk with anyone.
My compassion deepens.
Later I will carry this feeling forward into an understanding for my main character, Jo. Years later she will also feel the depth of Vincent’s sense of abandonment when she alone fought for his paintings to be accepted by the art elite status quo.
She expresses this in a letter to an art critic.
Here’s a portion of the excerpt I include in my book: “When I came to Holland—completely sure in myself about the great—the indescribable height of that solitary artist’s life—what I felt then, faced with the indifference that met me on all sides where Vincent and his work are concerned. [I felt] the burning sense of injustice of the whole world against him. . .I felt so abandoned—that I understood for the first time what he must have felt.”
Instead of merely reading the words, I feel an impact, thanks to that small ah-ha moment from the summer of 2019. My travel bug made all the difference.
Joan Fernandez # # #
About the Author
Joan Fernandez is a novelist who brings to light courageous women’s brilliant deeds in history. She is a former senior marketing executive and general partner of the financial powerhouse Edward Jones. In 2018, she retired from a 30+ year career to be a full-time writer. Her short story, “A Parisian Daughter,” was published in the anthology, “Feisty Deeds: Historical Fictions of Daring Women.” “Saving Vincent” (She Writes Press) is Joan's debut novel. Joan calls both St. Louis and Sedona, Arizona, home, enjoys foodie meals with her Cuban husband and antics with grandkids. Learn more at:
www.joanfernandezauthor.com
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