Pink Peach Trees "Souvenir de Mauve," Vincent Van Gogh, 1888 After the Orchard: "Souvenir de Mauve" 30 March 1888 t last! These are the days, filled with such light a Dutchman could never dream, even steeped in absinthe, I came seeking. If I thought my palette inadequate to the sky damped with clouds, the fields and orchards sunk beneath two feet of snow, how paler it seems with the sun finally streaming, not mere atmospherics, but light, pure and intense--greens beyond any in Holland or the chestnuts of a Paris arcade, and cobalts and ultramarines--abandon your greys! Not pale but chrome yellows, reds deep as the wine-colored Seine at dusk. And you, down from Denmark, can your eyes be any less dazzled than mine, reared under Dutch skies, soot-smudged the year round, the close--some call them "cozy"--homes, low-ceilinged and dark all day. No wonder Dutch painting is so murky, all chiaroscuro and the varnished sheen applied after--nothing else but the finish could glow. But here--the sun might burn the eyes right out of the heads of cold-blooded painters like us, schooled on shadow, our palettes tricked out with greys and bistre. Earth tones? Here, the earth is tinged violet, the sky carries the green of blossoming pears to cast heaven azure, topaz--the chromatic scale at a sitting! The whole day spent in the orchard--and see this peach tree, the way the earth seems by centering strokes to rise into the tree, the violets and pinks of the soil, the slightest trace of shadow, mirrored--no, itself come to bloom in the blossoms that grace each limb, pink runners of flame to the thinnest twig, and the clouds, released blossoms riding the wind, a meringue whipped of plain air. The whole canvas wrenched from the mistral, wind beating the canvas like sails, the easel pegged down, dust driven into the pigment. See how the brusque strokes convey color seized from the turmoil of growth, the traces--here and here-- where the canvas shows through. Enough of technique. We must seize the instant. Learn our craft, yes. Hours with pencil or reed whittled down to a point fine or thick as the study demands; they give the fluid stroke of a brush where needed and the line sharp when held firm. And perspective--here the light creates depth the eye captures best from the planes of juxtaposed color, a Japanese print brought to life. But learn, as Mauve taught me, the palette's arrangement, change it as the light demands--I owe the man that. How sad, how it robs some of the luster from a glorious day, to find my sister's notice. Mauve is dead. And not that old--still years of canvas to go. What I bring to this peach tree, bright where his palette was dim, I owe him. He had faith, he counseled my father when all thought this drawing another delusion. I never let on that I knew-- they were set when I traded the Bible for Ingres and pencil to have me committed. For my own good. Of course. To prevent more scandal. How I pained them, my trackless life, my mad veering from calling to calling--why should he believe this path was different, this calling that called me from his would lead anywhere better? Poor man. How little he understood, even persuaded my sketches showed promise. Ill-fitting trousers and jackets he bought me when desperate for paper. A father's love grows less and less each year like feasting on strawberries in spring until finally he's dead. How can I thank Mauve--his early faith, beyond what a cousin owes. A master of grey, he belongs to the North--brooding, always the lowering sky, yet I would remember him brightly for all the grief. And the pretense. Hypocrite!-- "A vicious character," he called me that day on the dunes--what he meant but lacked courage to put into words was he would not set foot in the home I had made with--say it as he would--a whore. How the bourgeois revile those who ply their trade plainly, and revile the warmth of two bodies, deny love could kindle between two when one walked the streets to put food on the table. For years I watched them, remote and beautiful, and somehow sad while beyond sadness. "Sorrow" I called a litho of Sien--that's the word. And what if it was after rejection, no less for her than for me, I admit my portion. "No, never," the other had said--why should I believe it? Love, I'd thought, will always will out, as these blossoms mastering snow and the mistral inch into sun and explode. And she, pregnant when I found her and again when I left--who knew the father? Does that deny love? There's a spark beyond spirit that draws us, the joy come dawn of a body drawn full-length beside you, its warmth more than the thin rays of sun that fall on a quilt in The Hague. I've never denied it-- but there was affection, our small intimate moments, the touches a husband I'm sure reserves for his wife, many though his mistresses be. Could I have stayed? I was getting the palette, mastering line and bituminous hues. I might now display with the masters, my work beside Mauve's. Could she have surrendered the open-aired strolling at night, hard drink and cigars, the canker burning her blood--my eyes still tear from the searing. Or is it just the absinthe? But today is my birthday, I'm turned thirty-five. A handful of paintings I deem worth the effort and so far to go. Two years older than Christ when he died--that sky dark as Van Ruysdael's ominous thunderheads encroaching on Haarlem this sun will not admit-- and who's less committed? With a brush in my hand and light flooding my eye, I forget, consumed by color--a fury lathers my blood till a little wine, some stew and a smoke settle me down and I wonder, was the child mine? And another, mistress of a café I've just lately left--we knew love a little. Dare I confide? These weeks we've spent tramping the fields, drinking late hours--we're friends. She, too, was bearing a child, sacrificed before anyone knew to the sewer. What a sword from the loins to my heart. All that I once wanted--a woman, a wife, and child--for what's a woman bereft of a child? They bear life roughly, look in the face, lined as parched soil, yet softened by touch, brought by pigment to blossom, an orchard of peach trees in their cheeks, the soft lining under their lids. But I've lost track of my meaning-- I feel the wind still driving my bones, almost frothing my glass. Is it this paltry lamplight after the blinding force of the sun? --That I cannot forgive--not Mauve, not the rest, for all that I owe him. Would he like this, I wonder. Too raw -- I hear him gruffly reject it--measure your strokes, subdue your colors and let none of the canvas shine through. This is art. Call yourself artist?--moderation. Who ever saw soil tinted violet, a sky verging on green? But what is art? Not photographs--washed out portraits of a world admitting no change, not the touched-up pinks of a face gone ice silver or faded brown as a sprig pressed between pages. My friend, school yourself as you're able, whatever lessons the world tosses up at your feet, but owe no allegiance except to your eye. Let your stroke change as light alters all that you see. Young as you are, you'll grow free of your stiffness, your hand will limber to the eye's demand. Mine did, from Etten to Antwerp, then Paris--a shock to the nerves. I took in the texture, the light, the whirling words through blossoming spring and like leaves gone to pigment in autumn till I tired of the clamor. And here? Such delicate hues break down in the riot of light-- yet how measured, one shape echoes another, the color carried in planes. And how calm. No bustle, no traffic of buggies and words--pointless to distraction. All of it--pardon my saying--shit. These orchards, nothing I've seen, nothing they said, could prepare me. Imagine a room, the four walls spread with triptychs--two horizontals flanking an upright. Cane fences and bordering cypresses enclose the viewer, yet the sky, cobalt and azure by turns, let the walls fall away, leaving the viewer alone, just the traces of work in the orchard. In one, I imagine, a discarded ladder, or a ploughman seen through a break in the fence; in another, I've got the start in my room, a rake and a scythe carelessly leaned on a cherry whose leaf shoots and clusters of blossoms flame orange and white on a sky breaking azure. You're inside, just you, free to stroll beneath boughs so vibrant, you feel the wind, smell the blooms garland your hair. Knowing the fruit will soon swell from the blossom and fall--but here, time is frozen. When you step in the room, you're lost to light's pure sonata.