For a glimpse of VanGogh’s life and aspirations, see his letters published in English under the title, “Letters of a Post-Impressionist,” written mostly to his brother--simple, pathetic documents, showing the eager, earnest striving of a man who finally went insane and shot himself. Critics and opponents of his work have seized upon his madness as proof of lack of sanity in what he painted--perhaps, but then is dullness the only proof positive of sanity? * * * * * Gauguin, half Breton, half Peruvian Creole, was a restless spirit. “More than once he circumnavigated the globe, and all his life he was at recurring intervals a victim to wander-thirst. In early manhood he returned to Paris and made an heroic attempt to settle down. He entered a bank, and got on there very well. “One day he saw in a dealer’s shop some paintings which brought back memories of the light and color he had seen in the tropics. He sought out the painters Pissarro and Guillaumin, and began painting at the age of thirty. Two years later, in 1880, he exhibited two landscapes in the manner of Pissarro. “Degas made the decisive impression on him, by his systematic division of large planes of color, and above all, by his strong drawing.”[20] [Illustration: VAN GOGH Portrait of Self] “Gauguin was as singular in his way as VanGogh in his. He did not “go mad,” but he withdrew from civilized society, buried himself in Tahiti and painted the natives, firmly convinced that only amidst primitive conditions could be found the inspiration of pure art. “His combative disposition impelled him to fight against painters, critics, dealers, buyers, and against established institutions and conventions. One would say fate pursued him. In 1894 at Concarneau in a quarrel with some boatmen who had insulted him, his ankle was broken by a sabot kick, leaving a painful injury from which he suffered until his death (in 1903).”[21] Of his aims he said in a letter to a friend: Physics, chemistry, and, above all, the study of nature, have produced an epoch of confusion in art, and it may be truly said that artists, robbed of all their savagery, have wandered into all kinds of paths in search of the productive element which they no longer possess. They now act only in disorderly groups, and are terrified as if lost when they find themselves alone. Solitude is not to be recommended to any one, for a man must have strength to bear it alone. All I have learnt from others has been an impediment to me. It is true that I know little, but what I do know is my own.