My earliest memories are of the six of us ice skating on the frozen canals running through the centre of Zundert, close to Father’s church. Vincent is a tentative skater, never keen to race with us, preferring the long straights where he would skate at his own pace. As the light closed in, we knew that Mother would have crispy potatoes, drizzled with rich, garlicky butter on the table ready to recharge hungry stomachs.
After school, Vincent used to stop off at Uncle Fredrich’s art supply shop. I watched my brother delight in arranging, rearranging, and then rearranging again the tubes of paint. He explains to me the colours he is creating, based on which tubes are next to each other.
Uncle sent each of us a note, offering us traineeships as we finished our schooling. Vincent was delighted to get out from under the oppressive religious dictates of our father, while I used the opportunity to seriously apply myself to a career prospect. I completed my training and secured a job with the Dutch office of the prestigious French art dealers, Goupil and Cie.
Vincent increasingly went his own way, wandering off with materials supplied by Uncle, into the surrounding countryside. The reality of money to secure materials never seemed to dawn on him and he eventually relied on me for paint, brushes and canvas, my lasting commitment.
The other children went their ways, the girls married off, and our eldest brother apprenticed into commerce. It left Vincent and me together, under the intimate influence of the artistic world, albeit he at the ‘pointy’ end, me supplying the necessaries.
We shared a small room in a local boarding house. I occasionally convinced him to come with me into town, to the cafes, the music halls, and to taste the delights of the brothels. But again, there was a disinterest, withdrawing into his sketching and painting, compulsively, often burning a candle well beyond my bedtime.
I was transferred to the London offices of Goupil. Vincent visited me a couple of times and in one of his weekly notes, declared an intention to move to Paris where the new Impressionist movement was gaining attention. I bankrolled the move.
Our letters were a lifelong habit, his increasingly frenetic ones were often detailing his ideas for a painting, sometimes including detailed sketches, ideas for new colour combinations, shopping lists, and the occasional mention of his domestic circumstances. He rarely responded to the specifics in my missives.
I appreciated his innovative bold colour combinations and his layered brush strokes. Despite my best efforts, he could not realise a sale in the conservative markets of Europe, still favouring a staid interest in the neoclassicists. But Claude Monet and Pierre Renoir were out in the pleine air. They were about to launch a revolution. These were exciting times and my decision to open my own art supply shop was superbly, albeit, accidentally timed.
The gallery attracted a small group of young men, the banter, the cross-fertilization was electric. None were selling their works; all were frenetically decrying the bourgeois surroundings.
I introduced Vincent to the crowd. Gauguin and he struck up a tentative rapport and plans were being made for Paul to follow him down to his newest haunt in Arles, where I had arranged for Vincent to receive help from Dr Rey for his growing medical uncertainties.
At about this time, I married my adorable Johanna and young Vincent was born within the year. Life was good, although Jo miscarried not long after Vincent’s first birthday. We were both devastated, but to add misery to the mix, my doctor was advising that my own feelings of tiredness, and sometimes delirium, might reflect a pox, from earlier exploits!
Things got worse. A note arrived advising that Vincent and Gauguin had had a massive falling out and that Vincent, in a moment of delirium, attacked himself with a knife. Dr Rey has stitched the wound but the doctor reports that Vincent is behaving very erratically.
I convince Vincent to move back closer to me and I have arranged lodgings with a Doctor Gachet, in Auvers sur Oise, just north of Paris, near the junctions of the Oise and the Seine rivers. The doctor runs a clinic for those with mental issues and is also a keen painter. He and Vincent briefly share a passion.
I see that Vincent’s paintings are losing their vibrancy; dark, violent pallets, nighttime scenes, full of almost satanic swirls, dark shapes. I visit him in Auvers and we spend a very happy, settled week together!
It was to be the last time we were out and about. Weeks later I made a frantic journey from Paris. I arrived in time to hold my brother, as his self-administered gunshot wound proved fatal!
Oh Vincent, why? I fear my own mortality as I am increasingly bedridden, nursed by Jo as the deliriums gain intensity.
I am working closely with Jo to ensure she works the market in my absence, to find and promote Vincent’s work. I know Vincent will be her salvation.