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“What’s that got to do with painting?” demanded De Bock. “We’re not specialists in viscera, are we? When people look at my canvases, I want them to see the mist in the trees, and the sun setting red behind the clouds. I don’t want them to see guts.”

Every morning Vincent went out bright and early to find a model for the day. Once it was a blacksmith’s boy, once an old woman from the insane asylum on the Geest, once a man from the peat market, and another time a grandmother and child from the Paddemoes, or Jewish quarter. Models cost him a great deal of money, money that he knew he ought to be saving for food for the end of the month. But of what good was it for him to be at The Hague, studying under Mauve, if he could not go full speed ahead? He would eat later, when he became established.

Mauve continued to instruct him patiently. Every evening Vincent went to the Uileboomen to work in the busy, warm studio. Sometimes he became discouraged because his water-colours were thick, muddy and dull. Mauve only laughed.

“Of course they’re not right yet,” he said. “If your work were transparent now, it would possess only a certain chic and would probably become heavy later on. Now you are pegging away at it and it becomes heavy, but afterwards it will go quickly and become light.”

“That’s true, Cousin Mauve, but if a man must earn money from his drawing, what is he to do?”

“Believe me, Vincent, if you try to arrive too soon, you will only kill yourself as an artist. The man of the day is usually the man of a day. In things of art the old saying is true, ‘Honesty is the best policy!’ It is better to take more trouble on a serious study than to develop a kind of chic that will flatter the public.”

“I want to be true to myself, Cousin Mauve, and express severe, true things in a rough manner. But when there is the necessity of making one’s living . . . I have done a few things I thought Tersteeg might . . . of course I realize . . .”

“Let me see them,” said Mauve.

He glanced at the water-colours and tore them into a thousand pieces. “Stick to your roughness, Vincent,” he said, “and don’t run after the amateurs and dealers. Let those who like come to you. In due time you shall reap.”

Vincent glanced down at the scraps of paper. “Thank you, Cousin Mauve,” he said. “I needed that kick.”

Mauve was having a little party that night, and a number of artists drifted in; Weissenbruch, known as the “merciless sword” for his fierce criticism of other men’s work; Breitner, De Bock, Jules Bakhuyzen and Neuhuys, Vos’s friend.

Welssenbruch was a little man with an enormous spirit, Nothing could ever conquer him. What he disliked—and that was nearly everything—he destroyed with a single lash of his tongue. He painted what he pleased and how he pleased, and made the public like it. Tersteeg had once objected to something in one of his canvases, so he refused to sell anything more through Goupil. Yet he sold everything he painted; nobody knew how or to whom. His face was as sharp as his tongue; his head, nose, and chin cutting. Everyone feared him and coveted his approbation. He had become a national character by the simple expedient of despising things. He got Vincent off into the corner by the fire, spat into the flames at frequent intervals to hear the pleasant sound of the hiss, and fondled a plaster foot.

“I hear you’re a Van Gogh,” he said. “Do you paint as successfully as your uncles sell pictures?”

“No. I don’t do anything successfully.”

“And a damn good thing for you. Every artist ought to starve until he’s sixty. Then perhaps he would turn out a few good pieces of canvas.”

“Tosh! You’re not much over forty, and you’re doing good work.”

Weissenbruch liked that “Tosh!” It was the first time anyone had had the courage to say it to him for years. He showed his appreciation by lighting into Vincent.

“If you think my painting is any good, you better give up and become a concierge. Why do you think I sell it to the fool public? Because it’s junk! If it was any good, I’d keep it for myself. No, my boy, I’m only practising now. When I’m sixty I shall really begin painting. Everything I do after that I shall keep by my side; when I die I’ll have it buried with me. No artist ever lets go of anything he thinks is good, Van Gogh. He only sells his garbage to the public.”

De Bock tipped Vincent a wink from the other side of the room, so Vincent said, “You’ve missed your profession, Weissenbruch; you ought to be an art critic.”

Weissenbruch laughed and called out, “This cousin of yours isn’t half as bad as he looks, Mauve. He’s got a tongue in his head.” He turned back to Vincent and said cruelly, “What in hell do you go round in those dirty rags for? Why don’t you buy yourself some decent clothes?”

Vincent was wearing an old suit of Theo’s that had been altered for him. The operation had not been successful, and, in addition, Vincent had been wearing it over his water-colours every day.