|
|
"Thomas Nast and
Vincent van Gogh" |
|
|
|
Vincent van Gogh's interest in art practice was
quickened by exposure to the wood engravings of the popular illustrated
journals of the day. This is seen in a letter to his artist friend Rappard
at the beginning of February 1883 in which he recalls his London years a
decade earlier: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I assure you that the
Graphics I have now are amazingly interesting. More than ten years
ago I was in London, I used to go every week to the show windows of
the printing offices of the "Graphic" and the "London News"
to see the new issues. The impression I got on the spot were so
strong that, notwithstanding all that has happened to me since, the
drawings are clear in my mind. At least my enthusiasm for those
things is rather stronger than it was even then. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Van
Gogh's letter coincides with
a period of intense collecting of magazine and newspaper illustrations as
a means of teaching himself to draw. He collected these prints either to
file away for future use or copied them systematically to absorb the
graphic techniques of his favorite illustrators and cartoonists. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
He declared: "I would like
to go to London with portfolio and visit the editors and managers of the
illustrated journals-also get information about the different processes-a
double-page spread allows for broader style." That he fully intended
to specialize in magazine illustration is seen in his hopeful observation
that magazine editors would welcome "somebody who considers making
illustrations his specialty." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It was with this goal in mind
that he systematically purchased and collected French, English, and
American illustrated journals, and cut out the engravings that appealed to
him and mounted them on heavy gray paper. These clippings clearly served
multiple functions for van Gogh. First, they provided a ready reference
file for his journalistic intentions, a familiar practice of the period
and known in contemporary parlance as the 'morgue.' Second, van Gogh
taught himself to draw in the abbreviated newspaper style by
systematically copying these illustrations. Third, perhaps inadvertently,
this practice affected his mature painterly methods that bear the impress
of his having learned drawing from transcribing prints. The broad parallel
gestures come straight out of the hatchings that he habitually rendered
when copying wood engravings and lithographs, a practice that helps us
understand the peculiarly graphic look of his paintings with their linear
rhythms, outlined forms, and thick parallel brushstrokes. Hence van Gogh's
definitive painting style paradoxically owes much of its novelty to his
insistent attention to the conventional medium of popular illustration as
much as to its message. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
As shown in his correspondence,
the peak years of van Gogh's interest in wood engravings are 1881-1883.
During this period, van Gogh sent his brother Theo a detailed list of his
collection of nearly one thousand prints. The artist had arranged them
into eighteen portfolios and classified them by subject, artist, and in
the case of 'the large pages' of Graphic, Illustrated London News, L'Illustration,
and Harper's Weekly, by size. In effect, these illustrations
provided him with the courage to persevere at a critical moment in his
career. He wrote to van Rappard in October 1882: "I assure you, every
time I feel a little out of sorts, I find in my collection of wood
engravings a stimulus to set to work with renewed zest. In all these
fellows I see an energy, a determination and a free, healthy, cheerful
spirit that animate me. And in their work there is something lofty and
dignified-even when they draw a dunghill." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Although van Gogh never mentions
the German-born caricaturist by name, he systematically perused Harper's
Weekly in which Nast's cartoons regularly appeared and eagerly
collected his work. The Riijksmuseum van Gogh possesses a total of
twenty-one cartoons by Nast, fifteen of which the Dutch painter bound
together in a special album. The appeal of Nast to van Gogh no doubt
operates at several levels. First, he was a successful cartoonist with an
international reputation, and probably wielded more influence than any
other artist of the nineteenth century. Amid the depressing gray flatness
of most of Harper's illustrations, Nast's potent black-line medium
and bold crosshatching stands out like a beacon in a fog. That these are
qualities that would have appealed to van Gogh is seen in his discussion
of division of light and dark planes in effective illustration:
"Either the ground and the figures must be brought more into harmony
and form a dark silhouette against the light sky-or sky and ground must
form together a misty gray whole, against which the toneful planes of the
figures stand out." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Independent of his graphic and
political skills, Nast would have been a particularly appealing model for
the Dutch artist. Like van Gogh, Nast's pictorial effects derived from a
solid knowledge of Dutch landscape, French academicism and realism, as
well as the work of the brilliant English and French graphic artists of
the day including Leech, Tenniel, Doré, and Daumier. It may be recalled
that Nast collected Doré's work, and probably knew the artist through
Harper's firm; Doré’s London: A Pilgrimage was serialized in Harper's
Weekly in 1872 and was the source of the illustration known as The
Prisoners that van Gogh copied at Saint-Rémy. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Four of the Nast cartoons in van
Gogh's collection-one representing a malaria victim in the nation's
capital of November 26, 1881 [see "Pomps
and Vanities"]; another of November 4, 1882 [see "Bill
Sykes"], with a Dickensian theme, showing a Tammany 'Bill Sykes'
masterminding the looting of the 'Public Treasury'; one of November 11,
1882 [see "Duty and
Pleasure" below], ‘It is a Duty and a Pleasure to Vote’,
satirizing coercive Democratic methods at the poll; and the fourth of
December 31, 1881 [see "Constancy"], attacking Mormons for rejecting the
Union's marriage laws-reveal the cartoonist's ingenious manipulation of
masculine fashion reduced to secondhand clothing-tall hat, long frock
coat-in creating salient shapes emblematic of urban squalor that van Gogh
wanted to capture in his work. It is difficult to imagine that van Gogh
did not have these documents before him, or similar ones culled from the
journalistic illustrations of his time, when he sketched Orphan Man with
Top Hat and Umbrella Under His Arm, Orphan Man with an Umbrella, Seen from
the Back and Orphan Man with Top Hat and Stick, Seen from the Back at The
Hague in the autumn of 1882. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Van
Gogh's series of sketches of
the orphan man (poorhouse pensioner), begun in September, takes on a
noticeably more pronounced silhouette and bolder crosshatching technique
in October-November, just at the moment when he is most subject to Nast's
influence. During his sojourn in The Hague, van Gogh seemed particularly
obsessed with figures viewed from behind, as indicated by several studies
of outdoor scenes. Here Nast's ‘It is a Duty and Pleasure to Vote’ [see
left thumbnail below], with its central protagonist seen from the rear and
played off against a surrounding crowd, may have served van Gogh as an
aide-mémoire. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Duty and Pleasure,
November 11, 1882
|
Greeting Card,
December 24, 1881
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In addition to his crisply
designed forms, Nast mined a vast repertoire of themes ranging from savage
political caricature to light comedy. Van Gogh clipped out a Nast parody
of a Christmas greeting card (December 24, 1881) depicting a summery July
day [see right thumbnail above]; it displays a colossal sunflower motif and a pair of
empty shoes that may just have resonated with van Gogh's sensibility. Even
more striking: the pose of the figure seated in profile, with bare legs,
on the edge of a riverbank, bears a remarkable similarity to van Gogh's
drawing Sorrow, of April 1882, subsequently lithographed. Even the line of
wildflowers and weeds running at a right angle to the bank is alike in
both cases. In addition, van Gogh's insertion of the English title in a
panel at the lower-right of the drawing recalls the cartoonist's device of
introducing messages within the pictorial space, as Nast did with his
label "Merry 4th of July." Finally, Nast's elaboration of the
terminals of his capital letters seems to have influenced van Gogh's
rather fanciful flourishes in the treatment of his title. What may have
attracted van Gogh to Nast's cartoon in the first place was his
relationship with the model for his drawing-Sien (Clasina Maria Hoornik),
and her five-year-old daughter Maria Wilhelmina. Several studies of the
period focus on a young girl (presumably Maria Wilhelmina) featuring
motifs shared by the Nast child, such as Girl in a
Wood, which depicts a
girl lifting her petticoat, and Girl with a Pinafore. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Van
Gogh's collection of Nast's
cartoons included the subject of Jumbo the elephant [see "Embroil
Nations"], the
largest pachyderm in captivity and P. T. Barnum's spectacular attraction
for "The Greatest Show on Earth." Nast based his composition on
the colossal form of the animal. The sight of the ample bulk swelling to
encompass the entire spatial field anticipates van Gogh's mature
compositions in which a single, isolated motif-say, a horse, cow, chair,
sunflower, a pair of shoes-dominates the pictorial field. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Van
Gogh clipped another
striking image of an animal by Nast, a large turkey confronting his
would-be executioner (a poor farmhand with the kind of rough clothing van Gogh's peasants wear) just before Thanksgiving Day [see "Thanksgiving
Dinner"].
Again, the reversal of human and animal relationships, with the underdog
dindon-the French term for both a turkey and a stupid person-having the
best of it, may have appealed to van Gogh's sense of humor. The artist
clipped still another Nast study of animal-human encounter [see left thumbnail
below], this time a composite of the human head of the Republican
ex-Secretary of State James G. Blaine and the body of a rhinoceros which
menacingly faces Democratic badger Perry Belmont-who had charged Blaine
with covering up corruption when serving in President Garfield's cabinet.
It cannot be coincidental that the contours of van Gogh's pathetic Horse
at a Garbage Dump, especially those defining back and rump, follow closely
those of Nast's rhino, including its bumps and sharp ridges. Van Gogh has
also experimented in the neck area with a coarse crosshatching that
further betrays Nast's influence. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bully and Browbeat,
May 13, 1882
|
It Takes a Star to Catch a Star,
December 17, 1881
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Two other powerful Harper's
Weekly pages by Nast concern the Star Route investigations and
prosecutions that commanded the newspaper headlines in late 1881 and 1882
[see right thumbnail above and "Fable"]. These routes were mail lines, indicated on
the postal maps by a star, leading to remote points, inaccessible by rail;
mail was still carried to them by horse-drawn vehicles. A ring of
officials who controlled the payment of the carriers arranged to have
their contracts drawn for amounts from five to ten times the coast of
service. The profits, which ran into the millions, were divided among the
enterprising grafters in almost every branch of the postal service as well
as several members of Congress. Nast's lively images reveal his ability to
create compositions of great complexity and profound visual appeal that
nevertheless convey the message with vivid clarity. One of these, ‘It
Takes a Star to Catch a Star’, must have caught van Gogh if only for the
sou'westers—a waterproof hat with a very broad rim behind to protect the
neck—worn by the offshore police dragging the ocean floor for Star Route
grafters. In January 1883 van Gogh executed a series of fishermen wearing
sou'westers from a variety of angles, just as Nast had done in his
cartoon. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By contrast, however, other
images by the American caricaturist collected by van Gogh appear more
documentary and less striking for their visual effect. This would indicate
the primary importance of the subject matter. We know that van Gogh was
loath to cut away the text when he collected his illustrations because it
proved useful for his referencing. The related text and the broader
context of the newspaper's political and social perspectives help us
understand why the artist valued these cartoons. Van Gogh's total
involvement with Nast, visually and textually, is seen in the sheet
devoted to Garibaldi at the time of his death in 1882, a moving testament
to both artists' admiration for the hero of Italian independence [see
"Garibaldi"]. Nast had been sent as a pictorial correspondent to cover
Garibaldi's Sicilian campaign in 1860 and sketched the leader's portrait
at Caserta. In his Harper's picture, Nast showed Garibaldi as he
had sketched him from life there, twenty-two years previously. In this
case, the Nast illustration served van Gogh both as personal memento and
as stimulus to creation. Like Nast and every other liberal in the
nineteenth century, van Gogh profoundly admired Garibaldi. Van Gogh
compared the grand oratorical skills of this ideal "take-charge"
person and committed patriot with those of his good friend Camille-Roulin,
the postal official at the Arles Station, who "argues with such
sweep, in the style of Garibaldi." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Van
Gogh's affinity with the
"despised and rejected" in any culture predisposed him to clip
out Nast's ‘(Dis) Honors are Easy.' Now Both Parties Have Something to
Hang On [see "(Dis)-Honors"]. The hard times of the previous decade led to a
vicious scapegoating of Chinese laborers in California. Pressures for the
exclusion of Chinese immigrants had their effect on the Republican party,
Nast's party of choice, which until this period had supported open
immigration. In 1882, a bipartisan Congressional coalition halted Chinese
immigration, and Nast sharply attacked this momentous turn from the social
policies of the Radical years. His cartoon shows a Chinese immigrant
desperately hanging onto a branch of a Liberty Tree suspended over a
steep, seaside precipice, while he is being pulled down by the Democratic
Tiger holding onto his pigtail and the Republican Elephant with his trunk
coiled around the Tiger, with the Tree of Liberty being uprooted. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Fiendish Assassins
May 20, 1882
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
But it is especially the
clipping of Nast's Fiendish Assassins. Poor Ireland. "Save Me from My
Friends!" [see thumbnail above] that indicates van Gogh's absorption in
the subjects of Nast's cartoons. The work refers to the assassination of
Lord Frederick Charles Cavendish, chief secretary for Ireland, and Thomas
Henry Burke, the under-secretary, by a splinter faction of the Fenian
society in Dublin's Phoenix Park on May 6, 1882. Nast depicts a female
personification of Ireland prostate with grief, while leaning for support
on Justice and Columbia. In this case, the editorial complement of Nast's
cartoon suggested that Irish-American Fenians instigated the conspiracy
abetted by Democratic toadying to the Irish vote. It warned against
alienating the moderates aligning themselves with Gladstone's Liberal
policies and bringing back the old Tory theory "that the Irish are a
king of wild beast, to be subdued only by absolute and unsparing
force." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nast shared the ethnic
prejudices exhibited in the rest of Harper's Weekly and even
created a vicious Irish stereotype. While the image in question delivered
a backhand slap against American Fenians, it was atypically sympathetic in
alluding to support for qualified home rule for Ireland. The image would
have appealed to van Gogh's deep fascination with the Irish whom he
encountered for the first time in London and whose poverty reminded him of
the Dutch peasantry in the Brabant. In 1878 a major agricultural crisis in
Ireland had threatened a recurrence of the terrible famine and mass
evictions of the 1840s. To resist evictions, a group of Fenians founded
the Irish Land League. Gaining the support of Charles Parnell, the
parliamentary spokesperson for home rule in Ireland, the Land League
became the focus of the hostile Tories who blamed it for the
assassinations of Cavendish and Burke. Van Gogh began early to collect
journalistic illustrations based on the Irish crisis, touching on matters
of the 1840s, 1870s, and 1880s. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Writing van Rappard late in
1882, van Gogh notes that at present he has "No less than fifty
sheets about Ireland," adding that while separately one might easily
overlook them, taken as a whole "one is struck by them." Two of
these belong to a series by Caton Woodville entitled The State of Ireland,
one of which is Women Carrying Home Meal-Sacks from the Relief Committee,
and may have influenced his own Bearers of the Burden. He also writes to
his friend about a Frank Holl composition that appeared in an 1876 issue
of the Graphic that he refers to as "Irish Emigrants"
(though it is actually entitled Gone! --Euston Station): |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I have something more to
tell you in connection with Hol's [sic] "Irish Emigrants."
The character of the woman I wrote to you about is something like
that of the principal figure of that sheet-I mean the mother with
the baby on her arm-that is, considered as a whole, without any
attention to details. I could not give you a better description of
her. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Here van Gogh was specifically
referring to Sien, the pregnant prostitute whom he took in and sheltered.
It may be recalled that, out of mixed personal, moral, and humane motives,
van Gogh considered it his duty to try to rescue Sien and her daughter
from hunger and degradation, but at the same time she became his model and
companion. What is critical here is van Gogh's association of the deserted
Irish with his impoverished friend. Here I believe that van Gogh intended
to establish a deliberate link between the cartoonist's personification
and this figure, as if he wanted Sien to serve an analogous allegorical
enterprise. His attitude towards her and the poor refugees from Ireland
betrays his middle-class paternalism, since he understands his role as a
substitute parent who must care for indigent—especially female—souls.
Hence I believe that it may not be fortuitous that his moving image of
Sien in the Sorrow, previously discussed in connection with another Nast
cartoon [see "Greeting
Card"], was based in part on Nast's prostrate
personification of Ireland. This is seen in the worn body, the way the
head is concealed by the bare arm, and the strands of hair hanging loosely
down the figure's back. (Although Nast's cartoon appeared in May, the
month following the first studies of Sorrow, van Gogh tended to touch up
his studies and embellish them, as seen in the reworking of the landscape
setting and the figure's hair.) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The numerous points of contact
between the Nast cartoons that van Gogh so lovingly preserved and his own
work of the period in which he collected them attest to a rare artistic
relationship in the nineteenth century. My purpose, however, in
constructing this relationship was not merely to show van Gogh's
dependence on Nast for specific motifs, but rather to demonstrate the
close affiliation of an artist we now consider a "master" with a
cartoonist relatively neglected in the history of art. Out of the welter
of popular illustration and cartoonery, van Gogh managed to create a style
that still remains accessible to a wide audience. It would seem that it is
precisely this crossover between the high and low that marks the taste of
the contemporary corporate millionaires who can afford to own an original.
But if so, then Nast's contribution to the formation of this phenomenon
has to be acknowledged. Naturally, it will never be possible to know fully
what van Gogh derived from Nast, but if we are to begin to comprehend
Nast's enormous appeal for him we need to develop a more inclusive
approach to art historical practice. The missing link between these two
cultural producers not only points to the politics of canon formation, but
represents part of the larger issue of the depoliticization of artistic
experience. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This essay is adapted from
"The Interactivity of Thomas Nast and High Art" by Albert Boime.
Citations are available upon request. |
|
| |
|
|
|
