Van Gogh's Life of Solitude

In order to better comprehend Vincent van Gogh’s lonesomeness, we have to broaden our vision beyond his artworks of the cafés and investigate different aspects of his life. Just like any ordinary person, van Gogh never preferred solitude. He once explained to his brother Theo in a letter:

Like everyone else, I need friendly or affectionate relationships or intimate companionship, and am not made of stone or iron like a pump or a lamppost, and like any man of culture or decency I cannot do without these things and not feel a void, a lack of something. (van Gogh 1:191)

As van Gogh expressed, he had always yearned for company and affection, without which he found life hollow and incomplete. Unfortunately, he had to endure solitude throughout most of his short life, as he could hardly establish any ‘affectionate relationship’ with his parents, his admired women and his friends, leading him to search for solace possibly in religion, art, as well as alcohol.

Born in March of 1853, in a family of six children in Holland, van Gogh grew up with a strained relationship with his parents. As young as twelve years old, he was sent to a boarding school fifteen miles away from home. Since then, he only returned home sporadically between his study and work in Holland, England and France, and because of quarrels with his parents, he never stayed home for longer than two years (Wallace 37). He once moaned that ‘I have become little more than a half strange, half tiresome person to Father and Mother… when I’m at home, I also have a lonesome, empty feeling’ (van Gogh1: 338). According to van Gogh, he and his parents failed to communicate with each other after living mostly apart for nearly twenty years. After the last departure in 1886, he never saw his parents again (Wallace 39).

Neither could van Gogh find love from the women he cared for. With a compelling passion for ‘an unhappy, forsaken or lonely’ lover (van Gogh 1: 420), he courted three forlorn women in his lifetime - an orphaned friend Ursula Loyer, his widowed cousin Kee Vos, and an abandoned prostitute Sien Clasina Hoornik. Sadly, the three women either immediatey rejected him or eventually abandoned him after a brief relationship, leaving the young man in despair and plight (Lubin 35-60).

Van Gogh also found it difficult to get along and make friends with the people around him. He spent most of his childhood alone among flowers, birds and insects rather than siblings and friends due to his inability to interact with others (du Quesne Van Gogh 31). As he grew up, he remained mostly anti-social. Even his dearest brother Theo found him a difficult person to live with when they shared an apartment in Paris (du Quesne Van Gogh 107). Although he later attempted to develop better camaraderie with Paul Gauguin by inviting him to the Yellow House in Arles, Gauguin soon deserted him as quickly as his eccentricity merged. As his insanity deteriorated, even his neighbor in Arles alienated him by stoning and jeering at him. Therefore, it is not surprising that Albert J. Lubin calls him ‘a stranger on the earth’ in the title of his biography of van Gogh (Stranger on the Earth - A Psychological Biography of Vincent van Gogh). Unable to associate with others, van Gogh lived like an alienated stranger in the world.

Such incessant solitude could have influenced him to choose careers that could offer him consolation. He once decided to be a clergyman at the age of twenty-four, possibly to seek comfort from religion. He once explained to Theo about this decision: ‘I hope and believe that my life will be changed somehow, and that this longing for Him will be satisfied: I too am sometimes sad and lonely’ (van Gogh 1:98). The lonely young man probably wished to find solace in faith. It might be the same reason when he gave up preaching and decided to paint three years later, as he once expressed ‘I am overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness… Only when I stand painting before my easel do I feel somewhat alive’ (van Gogh 3: 459). As he explained, he used art to temporarily relieve his ‘overwhelming loneliness’.

Having understood his lonesomeness, we would not be surprised to find van Gogh turn to alcohol in his search for relief from the suffocating desolation, as it could enliven him and lubricate his interaction with others, and hence dilute his misery momentarily. Hardly did he know before it was too late, however, that such a means of pacification would tragically cost him his health and eventually his life.

Image: Van Gogh, Vincent. Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe. 1889. Private collection.