Van Gogh’s Postal Paradigm
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“[T]he postal service knows no boundaries, its purpose is to satisfy needs that can’t be bound to the limits of a country and it will not provide complete satisfaction of these needs except under the condition that different states make efforts to organize it in an analogous and as often as possible uniform manner.”
—Eugène Borel, Head of the Swiss Department of Posts, 18741
“[A]rtistic education must extend beyond these esteemed Salon walls; it must penetrate into all layers of our society.”
—Jules Ferry, Minister of Public Instruction and the Arts, Salon of 18792
Art in the Age of the Universal Postal Union
On May 1, 1880, the last state-run Salon opened in Paris before its restructuring under the control of the Société des Artistes Françaises. Due to this transfer of power, historians of modern art have come to treat the 1880 Salon as a signal event, after which time France’s once predominant and centrally administered Beaux-Arts system gave way to an already emergent era of artistic independence.3 Few painters exemplify this new art historical epoch quite as vividly as Vincent van Gogh. In late June 1880, Van Gogh sent an impassioned letter to his brother Theo from his temporary home in Belgian coal country, in which [End Page 325] he expressed a feeling of “homesick[ness] for the country of paintings.”4 Following this note, Van Gogh would begin to pursue his artistic calling in earnest, but without any permanent homecoming to this so-called “country of paintings.” Instead, he spent the next decade on the move.
The itinerant Van Gogh managed, nevertheless, to avoid “succumbing to homesickness” and even to convince himself that “one’s country or native land is everywhere” through his regular access to works of art (primarily in the form of prints) and literature, which he could request and acquire via the post irrespective of his actual place of residence (Van Gogh, “Letter 155”). By summer’s end, Van Gogh would write again to Theo—an art dealer then living in Paris—to share that he had begun to make copies of reproductive prints after one of his artist heroes, Jean-François Millet. Van Gogh also requested in this same note that Theo send him additional examples of Millet’s art in order to advance his studies: “If I’m not mistaken, you should still have Millet’s ‘The labours of the fields.’ Would you be so kind as to lend them to me for a short while, and to send them to me by post?” (Van Gogh, “Letter 156”). The painter would continue to rely upon postal exchanges such as these throughout his brief but prolific career, and the medium proved essential at certain pivotal junctures, during which time Van Gogh sought to pursue his métier in locations with limited access to art or art supplies or artist compatriots. The painter’s use of the post is already quite well known, or at least his letters to Theo are well-read.5 However, Van Gogh specialists have yet to appreciate the postal medium’s full impact on the artist’s formation or the art-making of his time, because they have yet to analyze the post as an historical institution in its own right.6 This article aims to do just that.
On October 9, 1880, a Congress of the Universal Postal Union (UPU)—one of the first supranational organizations—gathered in Paris to discuss the establishment of a worldwide parcel post. The goal of this new UPU convention was to facilitate the shipment of small packages, such as stacks of prints or tubes of paint, at fixed rates on a global scale.7 Though seemingly incidental to the trajectory of Van Gogh’s career, this convention would ensure that the fledgling painter could continue to feel at home in his artworld, no matter where he resided. At the close of the Paris Congress on November 3, only nineteen member nations signed off on the parcel post, and even these services would not be...
