The Yellow House by Martin Gayford

Author:Martin Gayford [GAYFORD, MARTIN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316087209
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2009-10-31T04:00:00+00:00

Meanwhile I can at all events tell you that the last two studies are odd enough. Size 30 canvases, a wooden rush-bottomed chair all yellow on red tiles against a wall (daytime). Then Gauguin’s armchair, red and green night effect, wall and floor red and green again, on the seat two novels and a candle, on thin canvas with a thick impasto.

What he didn’t say in this almost telegraphic account was that the first chair he had painted was his own. Of course he couldn’t know that these two paintings he had just turned out so rapidly were to become among the most celebrated in the whole of art. But, deep down, he must have felt that they were powerful; enough, at any rate, to cause a rise in morale. The pictures were not just remarkable, they were almost unprecedented.

From Wednesday on, the skies outside the Yellow House had cleared and light levels increased in the studio. It had stopped raining. But it was sufficiently chilly to deter someone who hated winter, such as Vincent, from venturing out to paint. Instead, he had remained indoors and painted a radically novel type of still life: he had had the idea of painting his furniture. While paintings of foodstuffs—such as Gauguin’s Pumpkin and Apples—had been a staple of western art since the days of the Ancient Greeks, depictions of empty seats had not. Vincent, however, had long had intense feelings about chairs.

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