Van Gogh on the Train

Van Gogh on the Train
By Greg Mitchell - E & P
October 19, 2007

It's always amazing when an unexpected newspaper article -- just words and maybe a photo on grayish newsprint -- inspires a flood of memories or emotions. It happened to me again early on Thursday morning while riding a commuter train south into Manhattan.

The article, at the bottom of the front page of the Arts section of The New York Times, concerned the quixotic campaign by one Dominique-Charles Janssens to raise $30 million or more online to give Van Gogh fans a chance to collectively purchase one of his final wheat field paintings at a Sotheby's auction on Nov. 7 -- and install it in the room in Auvers-Sur-Oise where the haunted artist died in 1890 after shooting himself near one of those wheat fields.

Janssens, naturally, owns the inn, about an hour outside Paris, that holds the famous death room, now something of a shrine. The Times yesterday carried a sun-dappled photo of the inn, though not the room. The room does appear in a photo gallery at the Times' site, with Janssens sitting on a caned chair in it, smiling sheepishly. That irreverent grin kind of ticks me off.

Like I said: an article in a newspaper can really get you going, even during a commute. Why this one in my case? Exactly one year ago, my wife and I, longtime Van Gogh aficionados (both words and pictures), took a train from Paris, and then a cab, to Auvers, on a rainy day -- the kind of weather that seemed appropriate to ponder the artist's painful final days. The sunflowers were long gone by this time.

After visiting the inn, the Auberge Ravoux, we hiked up the steep hill, where Van Gogh's friends and perhaps his brother, Theo, carried his coffin. The houses, fences, and trees, were very old, so it was easy to imagine you were back in the 1890s. Virtually no one else was making the weekday walk with us.

We arrived at the 11th-century stone church immortalized in one of my favorite Van Gogh paintings, which we had seen again at Musee d'Orsay just the day before. You may know it -- with the deep blue sky and one figure bustling by. The church had refused to conduct a funeral service for Van Gogh, due to his suicide. So the men had carried the coffin a little further up the hill to where the wheat fields began. We followed the same route last October, in a steady drizzle.

Vincent's grave is in the simple town cemetery, which is surrounded by a low wall. There are no flashing lights or arrows, so you have to search a bit to find it. It's covered with vines and topped with a simple stone tablet and "Ici Repose Vincent Van Gogh." Someone had placed a potted yellow flower beside it.

Right next to it is an identical stone over the remains of his brother Theo. He died just a few months after Vincent (he just could not go on). The sibling arrangement is almost unbearably touching, along with the reminder that Vincent dwelled among the common folk right up to, and beyond, his death.

Then we went back to the inn and after paying a few euros climbed the time-worn stairs to the room where Vincent died on the second floor. As the Times related, it is empty save for a cane chair, which looks like it came right out of one of his paintings from Arles. It's fairly dark and the walls look like they haven't been painted for awhile, though a skylight lightens the mood a little -- while suggesting god's blessing. Vincent, I believe, once wrote in a letter to his brother that he wanted to ride one of his famous stars right into heaven.

I won't go on, except to say that all one wants to do there is linger in that spartan room, perhaps take a seat on the floor, soak it in, and meditate a bit. We had that privilege, in total silence for a few minutes, until the proverbial busload of Japanese tourists arrived. But the point is: You could still do it, most days, most of the time, apparently.

The Times story was skeptical of Jannsens' chances of actually raising the money and installing the painting in the room, but it didn't discuss the sacrilege, the massive security measures that would surely ruin the experience, the certain arrival of not the occasional tourist bus, but countless ones. Jannsen's argument is that Van Gogh had expressed a desire that one day there would be an exhibition of his paintings in a café (an ambitious goal for him at the time). Vincent didn't say anything about showing one $30 million painting in the room where he would die.

Then there was the photo of Jannsens grinning -- in that chair. As I said: A newspaper story can really get you going, even on a commuter train.