Nature morte à la Bible

Van Gogh painted this in October 1885, a few months after his father died suddenly that March. Theodorus van Gogh was a Protestant pastor, and the heavy Dutch Bible on the table was his, opened here to the book of Isaiah. Set against it, small and well-thumbed, is Vincent's own copy of Emile Zola's novel La joie de vivre, the joy of living. The two books sit for two ways of seeing the world, the father's and the son's, laid side by side just after the father was gone. Vincent told his brother Theo he had painted it quickly, and that he wanted to prove black could carry a picture. The snuffed-out candle stands just behind the Bible.