Work on quietly

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 1 May 1882

Your letter has given me more light than all my own worry and fretting about that problem of Mauve and Tersteeg. I congratulate you on finding it out, for now I think I understand it better. And if I understand you correctly, the only thing I have to do is to work on quietly without worrying and thinking about it as much as I did. If I think too much about it, I get that same dizzy feeling which you say a person who has not studied perspective gets, when he tries to follow the fugitive lines in a landscape and to account for them.

And just as the whole perspective changes with the shifted position of the eye, which does not depend on the object, but on the man who is looking (whether he stoops or stands on an elevation), so I think the change in Mauve and Tersteeg has been in part only imaginary, and can be accounted for by my own state of mind. I do not see clearly in such things, but your letter showed me distinctly that there is no reason for me to worry if only I work on. And now enough of this, there are other things I want to write about.

Letter 195
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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