The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

182 chapter 13which is my life—the power to create. ...I want to paint men and womenwith a touch of the eternal, whose symbol was once the halo, which we tryto convey by the very radiance and vibrancy of our coloring.” 20 He sufferedspiritually, not mentally: he had no attacks yet.The other of his last two paintings, Tangled Roots, could equally havebeen a suicide note. But the putative illness of his suicide, or the rationalplan of his suicide, or the momentary impulse of his suicide in the face of anew attack of porphyria, is of no help in understanding the bulk of his art,for example, Starry Night. Sometimes a suicide note is just a suicide note.And van Gogh was of course bourgeois. An educated Dutchman whoworked from age sixteen like his brother as an art dealer could be no other.He wrote in French when in France, as he did to Theo. In the usual businesslikeDutch way with commercial languages he was also completely fluentin English—he gave his first sermon in England in English—and couldread German well. He was the son of a Dutch Reform pastor and thenephew of three other art dealers. Holland’s pastors are dealers, too. Hisfather managed the farms of pioneering Protestants in the Catholic south ofthe Netherlands.And so Vincent made the case for his sacred ends in profane terms,expressing as simple prudence his hopes for a very grand Studio of theSouth. To his brother, who supported him apparently gladly and was paidin pictures to obviate the appearance of a peasantly handout, he wrote withprudence that if Gauguin were to join him in Arles the enterprise wouldhave low costs and would make money. “You always lose by being isolated.But you might think it’s a good idea that we share expenses, set an amountof, let’s say, 250 francs per month, if every month, besides and apart frommy work, you get a Gauguin. Provided that we do not exceed that sum,wouldn’t it mean a profit?” 21Compare his scheme for the leading Impressionists to pool some of theirmarket-valued paintings to support “a whole battalion of artists who havebeen working in unremitting poverty,” for example, that same V. vanGogh. 22 These are natural terms to use in pitching an idea to a businessmanin 1888. An aristocrat in the same activity, like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,only son of the Comte de Toulouse and on his mother’s side as well comingfrom one of the grandest families in France, would deign to talk this way tono one. And a peasant would merely beg the noble lord’s indulgence, orclaim his due, inarticulately. Only a bourgeois would offer words and reasons