Vincent van Gogh on using colour to express himself, overcoming difficulties, nature, feeling lost, and the blank canvas.
A brief overview of Vincent van Gogh before delving into his own words:
| Who (Identity) | Vincent Willem van Gogh, a Dutch post-impressionist painter, known for his significant contributions to art and his iconic and expressive style. |
| What (Contributions) | Van Gogh is celebrated for his extensive body of work, including masterpieces like “Starry Night,” “Sunflowers,” and “The Starry Night.” He played a pivotal role in the development of modern art and is known for his use of bold colors, swirling brushwork, and emotional depth in his paintings. |
| When (Period of Influence) | Van Gogh’s influence on the world of art began in the late 19th century, and his work continues to inspire artists and captivate audiences to this day. |
| Where (Geographic Focus) | Born in Zundert, Netherlands, van Gogh’s artistic journey took him to various locations, including Paris and Arles, where he created some of his most iconic works. |
| Why (Artistic Philosophy) | Van Gogh’s artistic philosophy revolved around capturing the essence of the human experience and the emotional power of art. He believed in the ability of art to convey profound emotions and the beauty of the natural world. |
| How (Technique and Style) | Known for his distinctive impasto technique, vibrant colors, and bold brushwork, van Gogh’s painting style is characterized by its emotional intensity and expressiveness. He often depicted scenes from everyday life and nature, infusing them with a sense of energy and emotion. |
This post is a series of extracts from Vincent’s letters, all of which can be found online for free here.
Be True To Yourself
Believe me that in artistic matters the words hold true: honesty is the best policy. Better to put a bit more effort into serious study than being stylish to win over the public. Occasionally, in times of worry, I’ve longed to be stylish, but on second thoughts I say no – just let me be myself – and express severe, rough, yet true things with rough workmanship. I won’t run after the art lovers or dealers, let those who are interested come to me.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Saturday, 11 March 1882.
How does one become mediocre? By complying with and conforming to one thing today and another tomorrow, as the world dictates, by never contradicting the world and by heeding public opinion!
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, on or about Sunday, 16 December 1883.
The Blank Canvas
I tell you, if one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm — and that’s a lie, and you said yourself in the past that it was a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity. Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you with a sort of imbecility.
You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter you can’t do anything. The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves.
Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares — and who has once broken the spell of ‘you can’t’.
Life itself likewise always turns towards one an infinitely meaningless, discouraging, dispiriting blank side on which there is nothing, any more than on a blank canvas.
But however meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn’t let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something, and hangs on to that, in short, breaks, ‘violates’ — they say.
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, Thursday, 2 October 1884.
Feeling
The feeling for things themselves, for reality, is of greater importance than the feeling for painting; anyway it is more productive and more inspiring.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, on or about Friday, 21 July 1882.
If only I could express what I feel, what fills my head and heart must be expressed in drawings or paintings.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Thursday, 29 December 1881.
True painters are guided by that conscience which is called sentiment. Their soul, their brains, are not there for the sake of the brush but the brush for their brains.
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, on or about Saturday, 10 October 1885.
Millet and Lhermitte are the true artists, because they do not paint things as they are, examined in a dry analytical manner, but as they, Millet, Lhermitte, Michelangelo, feel them to be.
I long most of all to learn how to produce those very inaccuracies, those very aberrations, reworkings, transformations of reality, as may turn it into, well – a lie if you like – but truer than the literal truth.
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, on or about Tuesday, 14 July 1885.
And with all my faults, people won’t find it as easy to overwhelm me as they think. I know too well what aim I have in view, I’m too absolutely and utterly convinced that I am, after all, on the right path — when I want to paint what I feel and feel what I paint — to worry too much about what people say of me.
To Anthon van Rappard. Nuenen, on or about Tuesday, 18 August 1885.
Patience
It is really and truly not until later that the artistic sensibility develops and matures through work.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 22 October 1882.
You will no doubt tell me, the moment may well arrive when one regrets haying become a painter. And what could I then reply on my own behalf? They who have such regrets are those who neglect solid study in the beginning and who race hurry-scurry to be top of the heap.
Well, the men of the day are men of just one day, but whoever has enough faith and love to take pleasure in precisely what others find dull, namely the study of anatomy, perspective, and proportion, will stay the course and mature slowly but surely.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, on or about Monday, 20 March 1882.
In the first part of life as a painter one sometimes unintentionally makes things difficult for oneself — through a feeling of not yet having mastered the business — through the uncertainty one feels about whether one will master it — through the fierce desire to make progress — through not yet trusting oneself — one cannot put aside a certain feeling of being harried, and one harries oneself despite not wanting to be harried when one works. There’s nothing to be done about it, and this is a time that one also can’t do without, and that should not and cannot be otherwise, in my view.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Thursday, 8 February 1883.
Overcoming Disappointments
If we but try to live uprightly, then we shall be all right, even though we shall inevitably experience true sorrow and genuine disappointments, and also probably make real mistakes and do wrong things, but it’s certainly true that it is better to be fervent in spirit, even if one accordingly makes more mistakes, than narrow-minded and overly cautious.
To Theo van Gogh. Amsterdam, Wednesday, 3 April 1878.
I was thinking again of what I read about Delacroix — 17 of his paintings were rejected; ‘dix-sept de refusés’, he himself told his friends straight out. I was thinking today that they really were almighty brave fellows, those pioneers. But the battle has to be continued even now, and for my part I also want to fight for as much and as little as I’m worth.
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, Monday, 6 April 1885.
I also believe that it may happen that one succeeds and one mustn’t begin by despairing; even if one loses here and there, and even if one sometimes feels a sort of decline, the point is nevertheless to revive and have courage, even though things don’t turn out as one first thought.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 22 October 1882.
Self-Belief
Although I am well aware of the worth and originality and superiority of Delacroix or Millet, for example, I can still say, yes, I too am something, I too can achieve something. But I must take these artists as my starting point, and then produce the little I am capable of in the same way.
To Theo van Gogh. Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Tuesday, 10 September 1889.
In judging me and my behaviour, Tersteeg always starts from the premise that I’m incapable of anything and am good for nothing. He told me that himself… ‘Oh, it will be the same with that painting of yours as with all the other things you’ve started — it won’t come to anything.’
I carry on working quietly, and he can say, to his heart’s content, all the absurd things about me that pop into his head.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 23 July 1882.
Painting
One of the things I like about painting is that for the same effort as for a drawing one takes home something that conveys the impression much better and is much more pleasing to look at. And at the same time more accurate.
In a word, it’s more rewarding than drawing. But it’s absolutely essential that one draw the objects in the correct proportion and position with some certainty before one begins. If an error is made there, it will all come to nothing.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 20 August 1882.
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Being A Dreamer
You may well have bouts of being a little absent-minded, a little dreamy, indeed there are some who become a little too absent-minded, a little too dreamy. That may indeed have happened with me, but all in all that is my own fault, maybe there was a reason for it, perhaps I was lost in thought for one reason or another, anxious, worried, but one gets over that in the end.
The dreamer sometimes falls into the doldrums, but is said to emerge from them again. And the absent-minded person also makes up for it with bouts of perspicacity.
Sometimes he is a person whose right to exist has a justification that is not always immediately obvious to you, or more usually, you may absent-mindedly allow it to slip from your mind. Someone who has been wandering about for a long time, tossed to and fro on a stormy sea, will in the end reach his destination.
Someone who has seemed to be good for nothing, unable to fill any job, any appointment, will find one in the end and, energetic and capable, will prove himself quite different from what he seemed at first.
To Theo van Gogh. Cuesmes, between about Tuesday, 22 and Thursday, 24 June 1880.
Technique
I shan’t enter into generalities concerning technique, but I certainly foresee that as I gain more of what I shall call expressive force, people will say not less but even more than they do now that I have no technique.
Hence I absolutely agree with you that what I am saying in my present work will have to be said more forcefully, and I am working hard to strengthen that aspect, but – that the general public will understand me better when I do – no.
Do you really think I don’t care about technique or that I don’t try for it? Oh, but I do, although only inasmuch as it allows me to say what I want to say (and if I cannot do that yet, or not yet perfectly, I am working hard to improve), but I don’t give a damn whether my language matches that of the rhetoricians (you remember making the comparison: if someone had something useful, true and necessary to say but said it in terms that were hard to understand, what good would that be to the speaker or to his audience?).
So the reason why one must work on one’s technique is simply to express better, more accurately, more profoundly what one feels, and the less verbiage the better. As for the rest, one need not bother with it.
Let us try to grasp the secrets of technique so well that people will be taken in and swear by all that is holy that we have no technique. Let our work be so skilful that it seems naïve and does not reek of our cleverness.
To Anthon van Rappard. Nuenen, on or about Tuesday, 18 March 1884.
Creative Process
I sit with a white board before the spot that strikes me — I look at what’s before my eyes — I say to myself, this white board must become something — I come back, dissatisfied — I put it aside, and after I’ve rested a little, feeling a kind of fear, I take a look at it — then I’m still dissatisfied — because I have that marvellous nature too much in mind for me to be satisfied — but still, I see in my work an echo of what struck me, I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me and that I’ve written it down in shorthand.
In my shorthand there may be words that are indecipherable — errors or gaps — yet something remains of what the wood or the beach or the figure said — and it isn’t a tame or conventional language which doesn’t stem from nature itself but from a studied manner or a system.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 3 September 1882.
Ambition
People like me aren’t really allowed to be ill. You must really understand how I regard art. One must work long and hard to arrive at the truthful. What I want and set as my goal is damned difficult, and yet I don’t believe I’m aiming too high. I want to make drawings that move some people.
Whether in figures or in landscapes, I would like to express not something sentimentally melancholic, but deep sorrow.
In short, I want to reach the point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply and that man feels subtly. Despite my so-called coarseness — you understand — perhaps precisely because of it. It seems pretentious to talk like this now, but that’s why I want to push on.
What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest.
Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody.
This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, on or about Friday, 21 July 1882.
And in my pictures I want to say something consoling, as music does. I want to paint men and women with a touch of the eternal, whose symbol was once the halo, which we try to convey by the very radiance and vibrancy of our colouring.
To Theo van Gogh. Arles, Monday, 3 September 1888.
Colour
Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully.
To Theo van Gogh. Arles, Saturday, 18 August 1888.
So, I am always caught between two currents of thought, firstly, material difficulties, turning this way and that to make a living, and then, the study of colour. I keep hoping that I’ll come up with something. To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours, their blending and their contrast, the mysterious vibrations of related tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star.
To Theo van Gogh. Arles, Monday, 3 September 1888.
It’s certain that by studying the laws of colours one can move from an instinctive belief in the great masters to being able to account for why one likes what one likes, and that’s very necessary nowadays when one considers how terribly arbitrarily and superficially people judge.
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, on or about Wednesday, 28 October 1885.
Painting From The Imagination
I retain from nature a certain sequence and a certain correctness of placement of the tones, I study nature so as not to do anything silly, to remain reasonable — but — I don’t really care whether my colours are precisely the same, so long as they look good on my canvas, just as they look good in life.
A man’s head or a woman’s head, looked at very composedly, is divinely beautiful, isn’t it? Well then — with painfully literal imitation one loses that general effect of looking beautiful against one another that tones have in nature; one preserves it by re-creating it in a colour spectrum parallel to, but not necessarily exactly, or far from the same as the subject.
Always and intelligently making use of the beautiful tones that the paints form of their own accord when one breaks them on the palette, again — starting from one’s palette — from one’s knowledge of the beautiful effect of colours, isn’t the same as copying nature mechanically and slavishly.
If you think this a dangerous tendency towards romanticism [romanticism refers to a movement in art in the 18th and 19th century when artists emphasized that sense and emotions – not simply reason and order – were equally important means of understanding and experiencing the world], a betrayal of ‘realism’ — painting from the imagination — having a greater love for the colourist’s palette than for nature, well then, so be it.
COLOUR EXPRESSES SOMETHING IN ITSELF. One can’t do without it; one must make use of it. What looks beautiful, really beautiful — is also right.
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, on or about Wednesday, 28 October 1885.
Japanese Art
If we study Japanese art, we discover a man who is undeniably wise, philosophical and intelligent, who spends his time – doing what? Studying the distance from the earth to the moon? No! Studying the politics of Bismarck? No! He studies … a single blade of grass.
But this blade of grass leads him to draw all the plants – then the seasons, the grand spectacle of landscapes, finally animals, then the human figure. That is how he spends his life, and life is too short to do everything.
Just think of that; isn’t it almost a new religion that these Japanese teach us, who are so simple and live in nature as if they themselves were flowers?
And we wouldn’t be able to study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming much happier and more cheerful, and it makes us return to nature, despite our education and our work in a world of convention.
I envy the Japanese the extreme clarity of everything in their work. It is never dull and it never seems to be done in too much of a hurry. Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure in a few sure strokes as if it were as easy as doing up your waistcoat.
To Theo van Gogh. Arles, Sunday, 23 or Monday, 24 September 1888.
Suffering
It seemed to me that you were suffering, like me, from seeing our youth go up in smoke – but if it throws out new growth in one’s work then nothing is lost, for the capacity to work is another form of youth.
To Theo van Gogh. Arles, on or about Sunday, 20 May 1888.
I can well do without God in both my life and also in my painting, but, suffering as I am, I cannot do without something greater than myself, something which is my life – the power to create.
To Theo van Gogh. Arles, Monday, 3 September 1888.
All the same, I’m sure that if one is brave then recovery comes from within, through the complete acceptance of suffering and death, and through the surrender of one’s will and love of self.
To Theo van Gogh. Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Tuesday, 10 September 1889.
But I just think about what Millet said: ‘I would never do away with suffering, for it is often that which makes artists express themselves most vigorously’.
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, Monday, 13 April 1885.
Willpower
What is drawing? How does one get there? It’s working one’s way through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How can one get through that wall? — since hammering on it doesn’t help at all. In my view, one must undermine the wall and grind through it slowly and patiently.
And behold, how can one remain dedicated to such a task without allowing oneself to be lured from it or distracted, unless one reflects and organizes one’s life according to principles? And it’s the same with other things as it is with artistic matters. And the great isn’t something accidental; it must be willed.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 22 October 1882.
Putting Principles Into Practice
Don’t think that I look with contempt on people such as you describe because their life isn’t founded on serious and well-considered principles. My view on this is as follows: the result must be an action, not an abstract idea.
I think principles are good and worth the effort only when they develop into deeds, and I think it’s good to reflect and to try to be conscientious, because that makes a person’s will to work more resolute and turns the various actions into a whole.
I think that people such as you describe would get more steadiness if they went about what they do more rationally, but otherwise I much prefer them to people who make a great show of their principles without making the slightest effort to put them into practice or even giving that a thought.
For the latter have no use for the finest of principles, and the former are precisely the people who, if they ever get round to living with willpower and reflection, will do something great. For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 22 October 1882.
Work Ethic
You will find yourself if you persist at your art, if you go more deeply into it than you have been doing up to now.
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, on or about Sunday, 16 December 1883.
I, for my part, consider it something of a privilege not to have started until I had left my romantic illusions behind. I must now make up for lost time and work hard, but it is precisely when one has left one’s illusions perdues behind one that work becomes a necessity and one of the few pleasures left. And then there ensues much peace and quiet.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 20 August 1882.
The reason I have now painted a fairly large number of studies in so short a time is that I keep at it, literally keep at it all day, scarcely taking time off even to eat or to drink.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 20 August 1882.
Within a few years I must have done a certain amount of work – I don’t need to rush, for there is no point in that, but I must carry on working in complete calm and serenity, as regularly and with as much concentration as possible, as much to the point as possible.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, on or about Tuesday, 7 August 1883.
Whether I succeed in the future depends, I believe, more on my work than on anything else. Provided I can stay on my feet, well I’ll fight my fight quietly in this way and no other, that is by calmly looking through my little window at the things in nature, and drawing them faithfully and lovingly.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 23 July 1882.
Life goes on like that, time doesn’t come back, but I’m working furiously, because of the very fact that I know that the opportunities to work don’t come back.
To Theo van Gogh. Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Tuesday, 10 September 1889.
Commerce & Saleability
The world never sees or respects man’s ‘humanity’ but only the greater or lesser value of the money or goods he carries with him so long as he is on this side of the grave.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 14 or Monday, 15 May 1882.
Please don’t think I don’t care about earning money. What I’m trying for is the shortest means to that end – on the understanding that the work is of genuine and lasting merit, which I can only expect if I put something really good into it and make an honest study of nature, not if I work exclusively with an eye to saleability – for which one is bound to suffer later.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 20 August 1882.
As for the commercial value of my work, I have no pretensions other than that I would be very surprised if in time my work doesn’t sell as well as that of others. Whether that happens now or later, well, I’m not bothered about that too much. Just working faithfully from nature and with persistence seems to me a sure way, and one that can’t end up with nothing.
Working with an eye to saleability isn’t exactly the right way in my view, but rather is cheating art lovers. The true artists didn’t do that; the sympathy they received sooner or later came because of their sincerity. I know no more than that, and don’t believe I need to know any more.
Making an effort to find art lovers and arouse their love is something else, and of course permissible. But it mustn’t become a speculation that might well go wrong and would certainly waste time that ought to be spent on work.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Monday, 31 July 1882.
Figure Drawing
I have come to feel more and more that figure drawing is an especially good thing to do, and that indirectly it also has a good effect on landscape drawing. If one draws a pollard willow as if it were a living being, which after all is what it is, then the surroundings follow almost by themselves, provided only that one has focused all one’s attention on that particular tree and not rested until there was some life in it.
To Theo van Gogh. Etten, between Wednesday, 12 and Saturday, 15 October 1881.
Careful study and the constant & repeated copying of Bargue’s Exercices au fusain have given me a better insight into figure-drawing. I have learned to measure and to see and to look for the broad outlines, so that, thank God, what seemed utterly impossible to me before is gradually becoming possible now.
To Theo van Gogh. Etten, mid-September 1881.
Constructive Criticism
If he [Anton Mauve, painter cousin-in-law of Vincent] says to me, ’This or that is no good,’ he immediately adds, ’but just try it this way or that,’ which is a different matter altogether from criticizing for the sake of criticizing.
If somebody says, ’You have this or that illness,’ that’s not a great deal of help, but if he says, ’Do this or that and you will get better,’ and his advice is reliable, then you see, he has told you the truth, and, and, it’s a help as well.
To Theo van Gogh. Etten, on or about Friday, 23 December 1881.
Determination
If something in you yourself says ‘you aren’t a painter’ — IT’S THEN THAT YOU SHOULD PAINT, old chap, and that voice will be silenced too, but precisely because of that.
To Theo van Gogh. Nieuw-Amsterdam, Sunday, 28 October 1883.
It was in this extreme poverty that I felt my energy return and that I said to myself, in any event I’ll recover from it, I’ll pick up my pencil that I put down in my great discouragement and I’ll get back to drawing, and from then on, it seems to me, everything has changed for me, and now I’m on my way and my pencil has become somewhat obedient and seems to become more so day by day.
To Theo van Gogh. Cuesmes, Friday, 24 September 1880.
Now I’m going through a similar period of struggle and despondency, of patience and impatience, of hope and desolation. But I must plod on and anyway, after a while I’ll understand more about making watercolours. If it were that easy, one wouldn’t take any pleasure in it. And it’s exactly the same with painting.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 8 or Monday, 9 January 1882.
Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge.
As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation.
By persistent I mean in the first place continued labour, but also not abandoning your approach because of what someone else says. I have hopes, brother, that in a few years, and even now already, you’ll gradually see things by me that will give you some recompense for your sacrifices.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, on or about Friday, 21 July 1882.
Companionship
When one lives with others and is bound by feelings of affection, then one realizes that one has a reason for living, that one may not be utterly worthless and expendable, but is perhaps good for something, since we need one another and are journeying together as compagnons de voyage. But our proper sense of self-esteem is also highly dependent upon our relationship with others.
To Theo van Gogh. Cuesmes, between about Monday, 11 and Thursday, 14 August 1879.
Solitude
It’s as well to go out into the world from time to time and mix with other people (and sometimes one feels, in fact, obliged and called upon to do so), but one who prefers to be quietly alone with his work and seems to need very few friends will go safest in the world and among people. One should never feel secure just because one has no difficulties or cares or handicaps, and one should never be too easy-going.
Even in the politest circles and the best surroundings and circumstances one should retain something of the original character of a Robinson Crusoe or of primitive man, for otherwise one cannot be rooted in oneself, and one must never let the fire in one’s soul die, for the time will inevitably come when it will be needed.
To Theo van Gogh. Amsterdam, Wednesday, 3 April 1878.
Deciding On One Main Discipline
Our first objective must be to find a specific position and a profession to which we can wholly devote ourselves. One must pay particular attention to the end, and that a victory gained after a whole life of work and effort is better than one gained with greater dispatch.
The sooner one tries to become accomplished in a certain position in life and a certain field and adopts a relatively independent way of thinking and acting, and the more one keeps to set rules, the stronger in character one will grow, and that does not mean becoming narrow-minded.
It is a wise thing to do this, because life is short and time passes quickly. If one is accomplished in one single thing, understanding one single thing well, then one has insight into and knowledge of many other things into the bargain.
To Theo van Gogh. Amsterdam, Wednesday, 3 April 1878.
Drawing
There are laws of proportion, of light and shadow, of perspective, that one must know in order to be able to draw anything at all. If one lacks that knowledge, it will always remain a fruitless struggle and one will never give birth to anything.
To Theo van Gogh. Brussels, Monday, 1 November 1880.
Love
It is good to love as many things as one can, for therein lies true strength, and those who love much, do much and accomplish much, and whatever is done with love is done well.
Love is the best and most noble thing in the human heart, especially when it has been tried and tested in life like gold in the fire, happy is he and strong in himself who has loved much and, even if he has wavered and doubted, has kept that divine fire and has returned to that which was in the beginning and shall never die.
If only one continues to love faithfully that which is verily worthy of love, and does not squander his love on truly trivial and insignificant and faint-hearted things, then one will gradually become more enlightened and stronger.
To Theo van Gogh. Amsterdam, Wednesday, 3 April 1878.
I consider a life without love a sinful condition and an immoral condition. If there’s anything I regret, it’s that for a time I let mystical and theological profundities seduce me into withdrawing too much inside myself. I’ve gradually stopped doing that. If you wake up in the morning and you’re not alone and you see in the twilight a fellow human being, it makes the world so much more agreeable.
To Theo van Gogh. Etten, on or about Friday, 23 December 1881.
Mentors
I believe that the longer you think about it the more you’ll see the definite necessity of more artistic surroundings for me, for how is one supposed to learn to draw unless someone shows you? With the best will in the world one cannot succeed without also coming into and remaining in contact with artists who are already further along.
To Theo van Gogh. Brussels, Monday, 1 November 1880.
Legacy
It must be good to die in the knowledge that one has done some truthful work and to know that, as a result, one will live on in the memory of at least a few and leave a good example for those who come after.
A work that is good may not last for ever, but the thought expressed by it will, and the work itself will surely survive for a very long time, and those who come later can do no better than follow in the footsteps of such predecessors and copy their example.
To Theo van Gogh. Amsterdam, Sunday, 3 March 1878.
I don’t know the future, Theo — but — I do know the eternal law that everything changes — think back 10 years and things were different, the conditions, the mood of the people, everything in short. And 10 years on, a great deal is bound to have changed again. But doing something endures — and one doesn’t easily regret having done something. The more active the better, and I’d rather fail than sit idle.
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, on or about Tuesday, 14 July 1885.
The world concerns me only in so far as I owe it a certain debt and duty, so to speak, because I have walked this earth for 30 years, and out of gratitude would like to leave some memento in the form of drawings and paintings – not made to please this school or that, but to express a genuine human feeling. So that work is my aim – and when one concentrates on this notion, everything one does is simplified.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, on or about Tuesday, 7 August 1883.
Poverty
Now it immediately makes a fatal impression on the public if a painter ‘does something on the side’. I’m not at all above that in this respect, I should say keep on painting, make a hundred studies, and if that’s not enough, two hundred, and just see if that doesn’t get you over ‘doing something on the side’.
Then accustoming yourself to poverty, seeing how a soldier or a labourer lives and stays healthy in wind and weather with the ordinary people’s food and dwelling, is as practical as earning a guilder or a bit more a week. After all, one’s not in the world for one’s comfort and doesn’t have to be any better off than the next man. Being better off helps hardly at all — after all, we can’t hold on to our youth.
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, on or about Saturday, 14 November 1885.
Nature
The feeling for and love of nature always strike a chord sooner or later with people who take an interest in art. The duty of the painter is to study nature in depth and to use all his intelligence, to put his feelings into his work so that it becomes comprehensible to others.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Monday, 31 July 1882.
Always continue walking a lot and loving nature, for that’s the real way to learn to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see.
To Theo van Gogh. London, beginning of January 1874.
The artist always comes up against resistance from nature in the beginning, but if he really takes her seriously he will not be put off by that opposition, on the contrary, it is all the more incentive to win her over – at heart, nature and the honest draughtsman are as one. (Nature is most certainly ‘intangible’, yet one must come to grips with her and do so with a firm hand.)
And having wrestled and struggled with nature for some time now, I find her more yielding and submissive, not that I have got there yet, no one is further from thinking that than I am, but things are beginning to come more easily.
To Theo van Gogh. Etten, between Wednesday, 12 and Saturday, 15 October 1881.
Routine
Do you get up early? I do regularly, it’s good to make a habit of it. It’s precious and already very dear to me, that early morning twilight. I usually go to bed early in the evening.
To Theo van Gogh. Paris, Tuesday, 9 November 1875.
Today I worked again from 7 o’clock in the morning until 6 o’clock in the evening without moving except to eat a bite a stone’s throw away. And that’s why the work’s going fast.
To Theo van Gogh. Arles, Wednesday, 26 September 1888.
Literature
I who read books to seek in them the artist who made them.
To Willemien van Gogh. Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Thursday, 19 September 1889.
My sympathies in the literary as well as the artistic sphere are drawn most strongly to those artists in whom I see the soul most at work.
To Anthon van Rappard. The Hague, on or about Wednesday, 21 March 1883.
A selection of some of Vincent’s favourite books are listed below, as compiled by the Van Gogh Museum.
- Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol (1843)
- Jules Michelet – L’amour (1858)
- Émile Zola – L’Oeuvre (1886)
- Alphonse Daudet – Tartarin de Tarascon (1887)
- John Keats – The Eve of St. Agnes (1820)
- George Eliot – Scenes of Clerical Life (1857)
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1887)
- Hans Christian Andersen – What the Moon Saw (1862)
- Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851-1852)
- Edmond de Goncourt – Chérie (1884)
- Victor Hugo – Les misérables (1862)
- Honoré de Balzac – Le Père Goriot (1835)
- Guy de Maupassant – Bel-Ami (1885)
- Pierre Loti – Madame Chrysanthème (1888)
- Voltaire – Candide (1759)
- Shakespeare – Macbeth (c. 1606-1607)
- Shakespeare – King Lear (1606-1607)
- Charles Dickens – Hard Times (1854)
- Emile Zola – Nana (1880)
- Emile Zola – La joie de vivre (1884)
Appreciating Art
You must in any case go to the museum often, it’s good to be acquainted with the old painters, too, and if you get the chance read about art, and especially magazines about art.
To Theo van Gogh. London, Wednesday, 19 November 1873.
How much there is in art that is beautiful, if only one can remember what one has seen, one is never empty or truly lonely, and never alone.
To Theo van Gogh. Laken, on or about Wednesday, 13 and Friday, 15 or Saturday, 16 November 1878.
Genius
I don’t deny the existence of genius, though, nor even its innate nature. But I do deny the inferences of it, that theory and training are always useless by the very nature of the thing.
To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, mid-June 1884.
Feeling Lost
And now for as much as 5 years, perhaps, I don’t know exactly, I’ve been more or less without a position, wandering hither and thither. Now you say, from such and such a time you’ve been going downhill, you’ve faded away, you’ve done nothing. Is that entirely true?
It’s true that sometimes I’ve earned my crust of bread, sometimes some friend has given me it as a favour; I’ve lived as best I could, better or worse, as things went; it’s true that I’ve lost several people’s trust, it’s true that my financial affairs are in a sorry state, it’s true that the future’s not a little dark, it’s true that I could have done better, it’s true that just in terms of earning my living I’ve lost time, it’s true that my studies themselves are in a rather sorry and disheartening state, and that I lack more, infinitely more than I have. But is that called going downhill, and is that called doing nothing?
Perhaps you’ll say, but why didn’t you continue as people would have wished you to continue, along the university road?
To that I’d say only this, it costs too much and then, that future was no better than the present one, on the road that I’m on. But on the road that I’m on I must continue; if I do nothing, if I don’t study, if I don’t keep on trying, then I’m lost, then woe betide me. That’s how I see this, to keep on, keep on, that’s what’s needed.
But what’s your ultimate goal, you’ll say. That goal will become clearer, will take shape slowly and surely, as the croquis becomes a sketch and the sketch a painting, as one works more seriously, as one digs deeper into the originally vague idea, the first fugitive, passing thought, unless it becomes firm.
My torment is none other than this, what could I be good for, couldn’t I serve and be useful in some way, how could I come to know more thoroughly, and go more deeply into this subject or that?
Do you see, it continually torments me, and then you feel a prisoner in penury, excluded from participating in this work or that, and such and such necessary things are beyond your reach. Because of that, you’re not without melancholy, and you feel emptiness where there could be friendship and high and serious affections, and you feel a terrible discouragement gnawing at your psychic energy itself, and fate seems able to put a barrier against the instincts for affection, or a tide of revulsion that overcomes you.
And then you say, How long, O Lord! Well, then, what can I say; does what goes on inside show on the outside? Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way.
To Theo van Gogh. Cuesmes, between about Tuesday, 22 and Thursday, 24 June 1880.
Hope
What am I in the eyes of most people – a nonentity or an eccentric or an obnoxious person – someone who has no position in society and never will have, in short the lowest of the low. Well, then – even if that were all absolutely true, I should one day like to show by my work what there is in the heart of such an eccentric, of such a nobody.
To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, on or about Friday, 21 July 1882.
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