See that book in that van Gogh painting? We're publishing it.

Portrait of Dr. Gachet, Vincent van Gogh, 1890.Pictured here is Portrait of Dr. Gachet, one of the last paintings done by Vincent van Gogh before the artist committed suicide in July of 1890. It's a great work on its own accord, but the portrait gained particular notoriety a hundred years after its creation when it was sold at auction for the then record-breaking price of $82.5 million. Author Cynthia Saltzman immortalized the moment in her terrific book on the painting and its sale, Portrait of Dr. Gachet: The Story of a van Gogh Masterpiece, Money, Politics, Collectors, Greed, and Loss.

Like me, you've probably seen reproductions of this work quite a lot, but did you ever notice those yellow books in the lower-left corner? I just stumbled into a reference that drew my attention to them. Van Gogh painted a legible title on the spine of each, and as it turns out, the top book is the 1867 French novel, Manette Salomon by the Goncourt brothers. The very same Manette Salomon that we happen to be publishing the first English translation of next spring! Very cool.

In short, Manette is about a group of artists of different types struggling to find their place in the art world of 1840s and 50s Paris. Written by Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, it fits neatly in the rich literary tradition of artists novels in France: appearing right between Balzac's The Unknown Masterpiece in 1831, and Émile Zola's L'Oeuvre in 1886. (The Goncourts were also responsible for the other yellow book on Dr. Gachet's table, the novel Germinie Lacerteux.) Going back to Saltzman's book, here's what she wrote on the significance of the books in the painting:

[Dutch scholar Evert van Uitert] argued that the yellow novels, Germinie Lacerteux and Manette Salomon, were not, as had been claimed, simply favorite books loaned by the artist to the doctor. Instead van Gogh had used them to align "the new art of portraiture" with "the modern novel," specifically as the Goncourts defined it in their preface to Germinie. The novel, the brothers contended, was "the great, serious, impassionate and living form of literary study and social inquiry," and also "contemporary moral history." The presence of the second book, Manette Salomon, van Uitert felt, also helped to shift the painting's melancholy theme away from the artist himself and toward the condition of French artists in the nineteenth century. He likened van Gogh's vision of the modern artist to that of the Goncourts, who describe the melancholy state of one of the artists in the novel:

"[He] came to that grief which seems in this century inevitably to crown the career and lives of the great painters of modern life. He was devoured by that fever of deception, that internal desolation which Gros called "the rage of the heart."

I love that by painting a title on a book, and in such a seemingly casual manner, van Gogh could add a whole range of depth and meaning to the portrait. I also love that in making the novel available for the first time in English (in a fantastic new translation by Tina A. Kover) we're going to be able to give a whole new audience access to that extra meaning for themselves. Plus, publishing a book that was known to an artist like van Gogh and was important enough to him to be included in a painting like this? Well, that kind of just kicks ass.

A specific pub date for Manette Salomon has not been set, but we expect it to be available in February or March of 2012. Please sign up for our email list to be kept up to date.

The pale silvery tones of Corot

“Writing about art is not a substitute for the art. Rather than standing in for the visual objects, texts about them ought, in the first place, to lead the reader (back) to those objects. Instead of being a substitute, a good text about art is a supplement to it.” —Mieke Bal

In first reading, and now publishing Corot by Elbert Hubbard, (currently available for free download). I have been wanting to spend some time in front of a Corot canvas or two. Being somewhere in southern Arizona, however, such opportunities don't come easily. So with some hopeful curiosity, I took a virtual trip to the National Gallery in London where I found a nice little collection of Corots online with suitably in-depth information and impressive image zooming capabilities. The online equivalent, I guess, of comprehensive wall labels and good lighting. Though I enjoyed poking around, ultimately I can't say it was all that satisfying an art experience. No surprise perhaps, but I did zoom my way into a few nice details that then brought me back to some of my favorite passages in the book:

"The pale silvery tones of Corot, the shadowy boundaries that separate the visible from the invisible can never be imitated ...

Cows in a Marshy Landscape (detail), Corot, probably 1860-70.

"Before a Corot you would better give way, and let its beauty caress your soul. His colors are thin and very simple—there is no challenge in his work as there is in the work of Turner. Greens and grays predominate, and the plain drab tones are blithe, airy, gracious ...

The Marsh at Arleux (detail), Corot, 1871.

"Corot coquettes with color—with pale lilac, silver gray, and diaphanous green. He poetizes everything he touches—quiet ponds, clumps of bushes, white-washed cottages, simple swards, yellow cows, blowsy peasants, woodland openings, stretching meadows and winding streams—they are all full of divine suggestion and joyous expectancy. 

Souvenir of a Journey to Coubron (detail), Corot, 1873.

"Something is just going to happen—somebody is coming, someone we love—you can almost detect a faint perfume, long remembered, never to be forgotten. A Corot is a tryst with all that you most admire and love best—it speaks of youth, joyous, hopeful, expectant youth."

Souvenir of Palluel (detail), Corot, 1871.

All image details © The National Gallery, London