STILL LiFE WITH CLOGS

A blinding sunrise this morning.  We're up early, cuz we're taking a trolley northward to meet beloved cousins for lunch.  They're driving southward to meet us.  Our meeting is an opportunity to unleash our senses of humor and do some serious laughing.  We're not allowing the distance between us to be a barrier.   One never wants to someday have to say.....gee, I wish we had gotten together.

 1881, Van Gogh left for The Hague to take painting lessons from his cousin by marriage, Anton Mauve.  Until then, he made only drawings.  Vincent wrote his brother Theo, "Well, Mauve immediately installed me in front of a still life consisting of a couple of old clogs and other objects, and so I could set to work."

Still Life with Clogs - 1881

Teacher Mauve was surprised by Vincent's first painting of the still life.   Mauve said to Vincent, "I always thought you were a bloody bore, but now I see that this isn't so."   This made Vincent so happy, he wrote wrote to his brother Theo,  "This remark from my teacher gives me more satisfaction than a whole cartload of Jesuitical compliments would give me....Because, Theo, my actual career begins with painting, don't you think it's all right to see it that way?"

We're looking at Van Gogh's first painting.  It is a simple composition, a pair of clogs on a wooden table.  The clogs are half hidden by an earthenware pot.  The bottle on the left still contains a little liquid.  Van Gogh scratched lines into the paint with a blunt object to indicate the edges of the wooden planks.  Note how dark, dull and drab the painting is when we compare it to his later works. 🖌

As we study the progression of Van Gogh's paintings, I personally have learned to look at Nature through his eyes.  For example, the clouds crawling across this morning's sky, above the sunrise, clearly show to me how Van Gogh might have used brush strokes to paint their countless differences in depth, direction and structure.  I see bare-branched trees and think of all of Vincent's pictures where he painted a single barren tree.  The way Van Gogh lived his life, how he saw Nature and the way he shared what he himself saw.......makes him a master......because of his humble approach, his imperfect approach, his simple approach.  We'll soon go on toward his final paintings that are the TA-DAs.  I'm thinking that not all of my followers care to read about an artist every day, so perhaps next week I will showcase the best of Vincent's best....the ones displayed wherever prints are sold. 

Authors and artists leave part of themselves behind.   There's something sacramental about holding the thoughts of Henry David Thoreau in my hands or standing in the Sistine Chapel looking up at the ceiling painted by Michelangelo.  I genuflect to the amazing souls who gave of themselves to such an extent that we can see and feel what they felt.  Whether through words or a paintbrush, each author and artist uses their tool to magnify their inner selves in a way that we can relate to them centuries later.  It's sort of like they pass their souls on to help us get through life's crazy mazes.  They inspire us, they teach us, they show us their journeys.