could bring them back to themselves. As a young doctor, I found Dr. Pinel’s theories thrilling. The merciful and humane attempt to guide a mad person back to his or her senses is not a simple task, and it is not always successful. Even now, in a new century, we do not know what keeps some of us tethered to reality while others go astray. We still do not know exactly how to diagnose the various forms of madness, and we certainly do not know how to cure them. This I have learned to my cost. But in those days, I still believed we could. I thought that kindness and regular hours, good, plain meals, fresh air, and moderate distraction—even work for the most capable—could relieve the mad.
Once I finished my medical training, I began to build an independent practice. I am not a man for committees and meetings. I could never have run a division of a hospital the way Falret did. Instead I worked in the city’s clinics, offered free consultations to the poor, and served as the medical officer of a spa for a few summers. I was even, for a spell, the doctor for a comic theater, soothing sore throats and wrapping twisted ankles so that actors could go back onstage. It was a hand-to-mouth existence, but I was a rich man compared to my artist friends. At least everyone recognizes the need for doctors.
Those were the days, in the 1850s and ’60s, when academic art was slowly giving way to something more individual. Courbet and Cézanne and their friends painted not flattering, fashionable portraits or gigantic mythology paintings but rather their own responses to the life that we all lived. These revolutionary canvases were not well received at first, so my friends were often in desperate straits. I owe several of my loveliest paintings to the fact that I helped them from time to time. I loaned Monet money, I took care of one of Renoir’s favorite models. They gave me canvases as payment. It was a satisfactory arrangement for everyone.
Though Cézanne and I became quite friendly, it was Camille Pissarro I knew best. At times he could barely feed his wife and their children. Of course I helped when the little ones became ill, when Madame Pissarro grew exhausted, when the painter’s eyes began giving him trouble. When he was living north of Paris, in Pontoise, and I bought a house for my family in the neighboring village of Auvers, we saw each other a great deal. Once Cézanne, Pissarro, and I made etchings together, using the little press I had in my attic studio. Pissarro, too, gave me paintings in exchange for medical care.
Over the years, some of these attachments faded, as the bonds of young men do. Cézanne moved to the South and rarely visited Paris. Gautier and I had a falling-out over money he owed me, Monet became rich and grand, and Pissarro bought a house south of Paris where he could live cheaply. Or perhaps it was my own fault—it was true that after Blanche died I became somewhat withdrawn. Yet I kept up with the art world through the 1870s and ’80s. I went to the Salons and other exhibitions, I visited dealers, I read the art criticism in the newspapers. I knew from Pissarro that his dealer was a Dutchman named Theo van Gogh, who worked for Boussod and Valadon. I had occasionally visited their premises on Boulevard Montmartre, but most of what I saw there was dull and conventional. Yet Pissarro claimed that this Van Gogh worked hard for him, trying to sell his beautiful landscapes. Over the years I had heard snippets of gossip about Theo van Gogh’s painter brother. He had lived with Theo for a year or two in Paris in the late 1880s, but our paths did not cross and I had no clear idea of what his pictures looked like.
In his letter proposing that I meet Theo van Gogh, Pissarro explained further. Apparently this brother, Vincent, had a history of mental troubles. He had spent a year in an asylum in Provence, having committed himself voluntarily. He felt that he was better now, but that the company of his fellow patients was hindering any further progress. He wanted to come north to be near Theo, but he did not want to live in Paris. The city, he felt, would be too busy, too jarring to his nervous state. He also felt it