Little can be found about his early years, though he likely saw the paintings of Antoine Vollon (1833-1900), whose studio on the old harbour attracted students disillusioned with their studies at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. The date of 1882 coincides with Vollon’s successful exhibition in Marseille. Lauzet has dedicated the arrangement to Paul Guigou (1865-1896), described by François Coppée as “a melancholic and dreamy Marseillais” and by Eugène Marsan as “the most incurably sad of all of the poets of Provence.” He lived in Paris during the 1880s, worked with Huysmans on the short-lived Modernist Revue and became a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Marseille before his death from tuberculosis in 1896.

Lauzet‘s death from tuberculosis in 1898 followed a period of ill health. Monet, Pissarro and Degas donated works for his charity sale in 1895. Paul Durand-Ruel produced the catalogue, and bought 13 of the 90 lots. Armand Silvestre, who wrote the introduction for the first Impressionist exhibition of 1873, wrote another for Lauzet. The esteem of his colleagues derived from his prints, which extended the reach of great artists and significant movements. L’Art impressioniste, illustrated with 25 of Lauzet’s etchings, was published in 1892 when the reputation of the Impressionists was uncertain.

Auguste Lauzet & Vincent van Gogh

In December 1889, Auguste Lauzet approached Theo van Gogh with the idea to produce and publish the first prints of Adolphe Monticelli’s (1824-1886) floral arrangements. A letter from Vincent to Theo, sent more than a year earlier regretted the fact that Monticelli’s work had “never yet been reproduced in good lithographs or in etchings which vibrate with life…”

By this point Monticelli had become an obsession for Vincent van Gogh and was largely behind his decision to move to Provence in February 1888. Guigou described him as “a purely instinctive artist…” Aaron Sheon felt this was crucial in understanding how van Gogh’s technique derived from Monticelli’s “spontaneous and highly personal late style.”

Lauzet’s prints were published as a volume in 1890. Paul Guigou provided the text; he and Lauzet had frequently visted Monticelli at his studio in Marseille and were anxious to dispel rumours that the heavy impasto and vivid colour of his later works, were the results of mental decline.

Monticelli’s “I paint for thirty years from now” could have applied to the visionary landscapes that van Gogh painted from the asylum in St. Remy. Lauzet was among the first to see them, after they arrived in Paris in late 1889.

A letter sent to Vincent describes Lauzet and his reaction to seeing them:

The artist seems very sympathetic to me. He’s from the south and has something of the Spaniard about him, pale face and black beard, but at the same time something gentle like an English poet.”

But what pleased him [Lauzet] above all was your canvases and your drawings… he understands them. He’s been seeing them for a long time at Tanguy’s, and he was really pleased to see all that I had here, while going through the drawings

there was a woman picking up apples that he liked, and I made him a present of it, for I think you’d have done the same. He came back… the next day to ask me if there wouldn’t be some way of having another drawing you did right at the beginning when you were at St-Rémy. On the left a little thicket of dark trees against a sky with a crescent moon, on the right a gate. He told me that he couldn’t get this drawing out of his mind… I suggested that he exchange it for a copy of his Monticelli album, which he accepted immediately.

Theo to Vincent van Gogh, 22nd December 1889

Lauzet is mentioned in 16 letters sent between the van Gogh brothers from December 1889 to Vincent’s death in July 1890. Theo suggested that Vincent return to Paris and share a studio with him. He also told him of Lauzet’s intentions to visit Marseille in February 1890 and how “he‘ll do what he can to call in on you“

I hope that Mr. Lauzet will come, I very much want to make his acquaintance. I trust in his opinion when he says that it’s Provence...

Vincent to Theo van Gogh, 1st February 1890

Lauzet never managed to visit Van Gogh at the asylum in Saint-Rémy (a letter from Theo suggests he couldn’t afford the trip) and the Monticelli album was published on 25th June 1890, just a month before Vincent van Gogh committed suicide. Whether he received the copy that Lauzet had promised him is unclear, but Lauzet is mentioned as late as 17th June, where in a letter to Theo he hopes that the etchings he still intends to produce will serve as “a sequel to the Lauzet-Monticelli publication.”

Lauzet’s decision to attend the funeral of someone he hadn’t met, may have stemmed from the guilt of not visiting earlier in the year. Vincent’s letters sent in the early weeks of February convey a “hope that Mr. Lauzet will come” and how he is “expecting a visit from a Marseille painter any day now…” Perhaps sadder still is the following letter:

Lately my health is quite good, however, and I’d dare to believe that if I were to spend a while with you that would have a lot of effect upon me to counteract the influence that the company I have here necessarily exerts. But it seems to me that there’s no hurry about this, and that we must consider calmly if this is the moment to spend money on the journey. Perhaps by sacrificing the journey one could be useful to Gauguin or Lauzet.

Vincent to Theo van Gogh, 12th February 1890

Whether this refers to Vincent returning to Paris, or Theo visiting him in Provence is hard to tell, but that Vincent felt the money for travel could be put to better use marketing the works of Gauguin and Lauzet is especially sad when considering his approaching mental breakdown and the period, described by Jan Hulsker as the “longest and saddest of his life.”

Lauzet’s came into the life of Vincent van Gogh as it was reaching its tragic climax. Undoubtedly Vincent was excited by Lauzet’s project, invigorated by his heartfelt praise and bitterly disappointed when he did not come to see him.

Van Gogh committed suicide after the Monticelli volume was published. Whether it aroused in him a wish to not merely emulate Monticelli in his use of texture and colour is difficult to say, but Van Gogh’s later letters certainly demonstrate a fascination for Monticelli’s tormented final years. They also describe being on “his tracks”, footsteps he had been following the moment he left Paris for Provence, and which he hoped might one day culminate in his own paintings being hung alongside Monticelli’s .

Vincent and Theo van Gogh died within 6 months of each other and many years before they could reap the benefits of their farsighted vision. Such a fact is hardly surprising when considering that even the Impressionists, for whom decades of group exhiitions, had failed to bring them stability and acceptance. Not until 1920 would Durand-Ruel feel able to say that:

“At last the Impressionist masters triumphed… My madness had been wisdom. To think that, had I passed away at sixty, I would have died debt-ridden and bankrupt, surrounded by a wealth of underrated treasures…“

Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922)

Van Gogh belonged to no group and his defining period was spent alone, painting from an asylum in Provence. The abiding belief of the impressionists was that colour should remain faithful to nature, even when form does not. Van Gogh’s paintings were neither faithful in colour or form, superseding an impressionism still struggling against convention, preceding the label of “post-impressionism” by almost 3 decades.