Everything is prose
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Drenthe, 27 September 1883
Can you assure me that the usual remittance will not be lacking? . . . I tell you, the condition on which the usual money loan will be sufficient is that one is well equipped to begin with, and starts with a supply of certain things. . . . Though I went as far as Drenthe, I shrink, not from taking the first step, but from taking the next one without being sure of my footing.
Experience forces me to demand a definite fixed arrangement. . . .
One must not undertake expeditions without the thorough conviction that one will be hampered everywhere and always by people who stand staring, but are unwilling to lend a helping hand. One must expect to be distrusted at every inn - like any poor peddler (for that is what they take one for). Often one has to pay the money for board and lodging in advance - as I have to do here - to get them to take one in for pity's sake. And so everything is prose, everything is calculation in regard to a plan for an excursion, which, after all, has poetry for its end.
Letter 329
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I must have some security
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Drenthe, 27 September 1883
This morning the weather was better again, so I went out to paint. But it was impossible, I was missing four or five colors, and I came home so miserable. I am sorry to have risked myself so far without a sufficient supply. I know from experience how it ends when one undertakes such an expedition . . . .
You remember, perhaps, how it was with me in the Borinage. Well, I am rather afraid it would be the same thing here all over again, and I must have some security before I risk myself further, otherwise I shall go back (Oh, you know, that's what I say, but I really want to stay). I did not see any good at the time, nor do I now, in reaching such a point of destitution, in literally having no roof over my head, in having to wander and wander forever like a tramp, without finding either rest or food or covering anywhere - besides, without any possibility of working.
Letter 329
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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One will find out things for oneself
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 25 September 1882
Remember that I want to hear your criticisms exactly as you think. I often feel the longing and need to ask someone's advice on different questions, but I do not give in to it after what happened with Mauve, and I do not talk to painters about my work. Somebody may be remarkably clever, but what use is it to me when he tells me to do things differently from the way he does it himself? I would rather Mauve had told me something about the use of body color instead of saying, “Under no circumstances must you use body color,” whereas he himself and all the others almost always use it, and with the best results. Well, in many cases, one will eventually be able to find out things for oneself, and that is what I try to do. Yes, if I could do exactly what I wanted, I should undertake painting on an even larger scale, and especially with more models.
Letter 234
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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You can't judge the future from the one
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 25 September 1882
Today I sent you a painted study by mail. But as I told you in my last letter, of course I would much rather that you saw them all together; and of course you can't judge the future from the one, as I have been handling the brush for too short a time not to expect great changes.
. . . If when looking at it and knowing that I have many more besides this one, you do not regret having enabled me to make it, then I shall be satisfied and shall continue with good courage. If it is a disappointment to you, you must remember that it is such a short time since I began painting. If it pleases you, so much the better for me, for I want so much to send you something that gives you pleasure.
Letter 234
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Little miseries
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 25 September 1882
You cannot imagine how irritating and tiring it is when people always stand so close to you. Sometimes it makes me so nervous that I have to give up. So yesterday morning, though it was still very early and I had hoped to be left alone, a study of the chestnut trees in the Bezuidenhout (which are so splendid) turned out all wrong for this reason. And people are sometimes so rude and impertinent. Well, but it is not just the disappointment it causes, but also the waste of materials. Of course such things will not get the better of me, and I shall overcome them just as other people do, but I feel I should reach my goal much more quickly if there were less of those little miseries.
Letter 234
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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One has to begin anew
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 25 September 1882
I was and am even now rather hard up, that is to say, in regard to painting. There are so many, many expenses. This is partly because so many things that I start turn out wrong, and then one has to begin anew, and all the trouble has been in vain - except that after all, this is the way to make progress, and one must persevere.
Letter 234
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Narrow is the way
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, 24 September 1880
Just wait, and perhaps you'll see that I too am a workman. Though I cannot predict what I shall be able to do, I hope to make a few sketches with perhaps something human in them, but first I must do the Bargue drawings and other more or less difficult things. Narrow is the way and straight the gate and there are only a few who find it.
Letter 136
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Something of the human soul
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, 24 September 1880
Even when he draws bricks, granite, iron bars, or the railing of a bridge, Méryon puts into his etchings something of the human soul, moved by I do not know what inner sorrow. . . . It is akin to what Albrecht Dürer expressed in his “Melancholia,” and James Tissot and M. Maris (different though these two may be) in our own day. A discerning critic once rightly said of James Tissot, “He is a troubled soul.” However this may be, there is something of the human soul in his work and that is why he is great, immense, infinite. . . .
Méryon is said to have had so much love that, just like Dickens's Sydney Carton, he loved even the stones of certain places. But in Millet, in Jules Breton, in Jozef Israëls, the precious pearl, the human soul, is even more in evidence and better expressed in a noble, worthier, and if you will allow me, more evangelical tone.
Letter 136
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I cannot tell you how happy I am
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, 24 September 1880
I cannot tell you (though fresh problems arise and will continue to arise every day), I cannot tell you how happy I am that I have taken up drawing again. I had been thinking about it for a long time, but always considered it impossible and beyond my abilities. But now, though I continue to be conscious of my failings and of my depressing dependence on a great many things, now I have recovered my peace of mind and my energy increases by the day.
Letter 136
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I have much fellow-feeling for them
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, 24 September 1880
The miners and the weavers still form a race somehow apart from other workers and artisans and I have much fellow-feeling for them and I should consider myself fortunate if I could draw them one day, for then these as yet unknown, or virtually unknown, types would be brought out into the light of day.
The man from the depths, from the abyss, de profundis, that is the miner. The other, with the faraway look, almost daydreaming, almost a sleepwalker, that is the weaver. I have been living among them now for nearly 2 years and have learned a little of their special character, in particular that of the miners. And increasingly I find something touching and even pathetic in these poor, humble workers, the lowest of the low in a manner of speaking, and the most despised, who, owing to a possibly widely held but quite baseless and inaccurate presumption, are usually considered a race of knaves and scoundrels. Knaves, drunkards and scoundrels may be found here, of course, just as elsewhere, but the real type is nothing at all like that.
Letter 136
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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In these depths of misery my energy revived
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, 24 September 1880
I earned a few crusts here and there en route in exchange for a picture or a drawing or two I had in my bag. But when my ten francs ran out I tried to bivouac in the open air the last 3 nights, once in an abandoned carriage which was completely white with hoarfrost the next morning, not the best accommodation, once in a pile of faggots; and once, and that was a slight improvement, in a haystack, that had been opened up, where I succeeded in making myself a slightly more comfortable little hideaway, though the drizzle did not exactly add to my enjoyment.
Well, and yet it was in these depths of misery that I felt my energy revive and I said to myself, I shall get over it somehow, I shall set to work again with my pencil, which I had cast aside in my deep dejection, and I shall draw again, and from that moment I have had the feeling that everything has changed for me, and now I am in my stride and my pencil has become slightly more willing and seems to be getting more so by the day. My over-long and over-intense misery had discouraged me so much that I was unable to do anything.
Letter 136
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Look at things through different eyes
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, 24 September 1880
In fact I set out a bit reluctantly, though I can't exactly say why. But I had told myself, You must see Courrières. I had just 10 francs in my pocket and because I had started out by taking the train, that was soon gone, and I was on the road for a week, it was a rather grueling trip. . . .
Although this trip nearly killed me and I came back spent with fatigue, with crippled feet and in more or less depressed state of mind, I do not regret it, because I saw some interesting things and the terrible ordeals of suffering are what teach you to look at things through different eyes.
Letter 136
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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First the pain, then the joy
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, 24 September 1880
I am still working on Bargue's Cours de Dessin, and intend to finish it before I go on to anything else, for both my hand and my mind are growing daily more supple and strong as a result, and I cannot thank Mr. Tersteeg enough for having been so kind as to lend it to me. The models are outstanding. Meanwhile I am reading one book on anatomy and another on perspective, which Mr. Tersteeg also sent me. These studies are demanding and sometimes the books are extremely tedious, but I think all the same that it's doing me good to study them.
So you see that I am working away hard, though for the moment it is not yielding particularly gratifying results. But I have every hope that these thorns will bear white blossoms in due course and that these apparently fruitless struggles are nothing but labor pains. First the pain, then the joy.
Letter 136
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I shall have to return to it and tackle it again
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, 24 September 1880
Well! I propose to make two drawings, in sepia or something else, one after that etching, the other after “Le Four dans les Landes” by Th. Rousseau. Indeed, I have already done a sepia of the latter, but if you compare it with Daubigny's etching you will see that it contrasts feebly, although considered on its own the sepia may betray some tone and sentiment. I shall have to return to it and tackle it again.
Letter 136
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Feeling is a great thing
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 19 September 1882
I consider making studies like sowing, and making pictures like reaping.
I believe one gets sounder ideas when the thoughts arise from direct contact with things than when one looks at them with the set purpose of finding certain facts in them.
It is the same with the question of the color scheme. There are colors which harmonize together wonderfully, but I try my best to make it as I see it before I set to work to make it as I feel it. And yet feeling is a great thing, and without it one would not be able to do anything.
Sometimes I long for harvest time, that is, for the time when I shall be so imbued with the study of nature that I myself can create something in a picture. However, analyzing things is no trouble to me, nor is it something I dislike doing.
Letter 233
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Everything may be useful
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 18 September 1882
I should like to get some of the studies you have back sometime, the ones you do not care to keep (of course, if you have a chance to send them). If there is anything you want to keep, if there is anything I have here you would like to have, just say so, for I consider everything as belonging to you. If I ask it back, it is because what is made directly from the model is often necessary for watercolors, for instance. But there is no hurry - just don't throw them away, even though they are not so very well done, for everything may be useful. I do not think I am mistaken in believing that being and remaining productive depends on the studies one has and continues to make. The more variety there is in them, the more one drudges on them, the more easily one works later when it comes to making real pictures or drawings. In short, I reckon the studies to be the seed, and the more one sows, the more one may hope to reap.
Letter 232
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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It is not a misfortune to struggle on alone
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 18 September 1882
If I had remained on good terms with Mauve, and had done a watercolor like the one of the little bench, or now the one of these orphans, I think that he would have pointed something out to me which would have made it saleable, and which would have given it quite a different aspect.
It is a fact that many a painter's watercolors or pictures are worked up by another painter - and sometimes even completely altered.
That is what I miss now - but though I don't exactly disapprove of more experienced painters either making suggestions or working it up themselves (especially because it is so necessary for the younger ones to earn money in order to be able to keep going), I think it is not exactly a misfortune to struggle on alone.
What one learns from personal experience is not learned so quickly, but it is imprinted more deeply on the mind.
Letter 232
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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The sacrifice of the whole man
Vincent van Gogh to Anthon van Rappard, from The Hague, 18-19 September 1882
I am organizing my whole life so as to do the things of everyday life that Dickens describes and the artists I've mentioned draw. Millet says, “Dans l’art - il faut y mettre sa peau” - yes, art demands the sacrifice of the whole man. I have engaged in the struggle, I know what I want . . . . My intercourse with artists has stopped almost completely, without my being able to explain precisely how and why this has come about. All kinds of eccentric and bad things are thought and said about me, which makes me feel somewhat forlorn now and then, but on the other hand it concentrates my attention on the things that never change - that is to say, the eternal beauty of nature. Often I think of the old story of Robinson Crusoe, who did not lose courage in his isolation, but managed to create a round of activities for himself so that through his own seeking and toiling his life became very active and animated.
Letter R13
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Where is their human feeling?
Vincent van Gogh to Anthon van Rappard, from The Hague, 18-19 September 1882
I have been to an exhibition of watercolors where there were a good many things by Italians. Clever, very clever - and yet they left me with a feeling of emptiness . . . . Oh, certainly, these Italians are very clever, but where is their sentiment, their human feeling? I would rather see a little grey sketch by Lançon - some rag pickers eating soup, while outside it is raining or snowing - than those brilliant peacock’s feathers by those Italians - who seem to multiply daily, whereas the soberer artists remain just as rare as always.
I mean it, Rappard, I would just as soon be a waiter in a hotel, for instance, than the kind of watercolor manufacturer some of those Italians are.
Letter R13
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Come with me
Vincent van Gogh to Anthon van Rappard, from The Hague, 12-14 September 1882
I have taken a lot of trouble to get things about miners. . . . These subjects are rare - I wish I myself could make studies of them eventually. Do let me know, Rappard, but in all seriousness, whether - if I went away - for instance to the mining district of the Borinage for two months - you would like to come with me.
It is rather a difficult stretch of country - such a journey is not a pleasure trip - but it is one of those things I should undertake with enormous pleasure as soon as I feel I have gained more dexterity in drawing people in action with lightning speed - for I know that there are so many beautiful things to do which have hardly, if ever, been painted by others. But because one has to contend with all kinds of difficulties in such a district, it would not be superfluous to have a friend along.
Letter R12
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Things that have soul in them
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 11 September 1882
I love to make those sketches in the street, and as I wrote you in my last letter, I certainly want to reach a sort of perfection in it.
Do you know an American magazine called Harper's Monthly? There are wonderful sketches in it. I myself know it only slightly. I have seen only six numbers, and possess but three of them. But there are things in it which strike me dumb with admiration, including “Glassworks” and “Foundry,” all scenes from factories. And also sketches of a Quaker town in the olden days by Howard Pyle. I am full of new pleasure in those things, because I have new hope of making things that have soul in them myself.
Letter 230
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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One need not take it so very seriously
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 11 September 1882
You remember I wrote you in my last letter that I was going to the potato market.
I brought home many sketches that time, it was extraordinarily intriguing - but it may serve as an example of The Hague public's politeness towards painters that suddenly a fellow from behind me, or probably from a window, spat his quid of tobacco onto my paper. Well, one has trouble enough sometimes. But one need not take it so very seriously; those people are not bad, they do not understand anything about it, and probably think I am a lunatic when they see me making a drawing with large hooks and crooks which don't mean anything to them.
Letter 230
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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A little drawing of a “saleable” nature
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 11 September 1882
As you will remember, when you were here, you spoke about my someday trying to send you a little drawing of a “saleable” nature. However, you must excuse my not knowing exactly when a drawing is, and when it is not, that kind. I used to think I knew, but now I perceive daily that I am mistaken.
Well, I hope this little bench, though perhaps not yet saleable, will show you that I am not averse to choosing subjects sometimes which are pleasant or attractive and, as such, will find buyers sooner than things of a more gloomy sentiment. . . .
Now I should like to hear from you if this little drawing is more or less the kind we spoke about. I send it to you because I should not want you to think I had forgotten, but later I hope to send you some better things.
Letter 230
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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To have patience and to work on
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 9 September 1882
Well, to have patience and to work on, that is the question. . . . And I firmly believe that if I continue doing this, I shall learn to express the bustle of laborers in the streets or in the fields.
I always try my best to put all my energy into my work, for my greatest desire is to make beautiful things. But making beautiful things costs trouble and disappointment and perseverance.
Letter 229
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I have often failed when I tried
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 9 September 1882
I feel that at all events painting will indirectly rouse other things in me too.
Look, for instance, at this little sketch of the potato market on the North Wall. That bustling of the workmen and the women, with the baskets being loaded from the barge, is very intriguing to look at. Those are the things I should want to draw and paint vigorously - the life and movement in such a scene, and the types of people. But I am not surprised that I cannot do it at once, and that up to now I have often failed when I tried. By painting I shall certainly become more proficient with the colors and better able to take on such a subject.
Letter 229
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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It is not yet the real thing
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 9 September 1882
How many difficulties have to be overcome before one can express something, but those very difficulties are the stimulus. . . .
I feel such creative power in myself that I know for sure that the time will arrive when, so to speak, I shall regularly make something good every day.
But very rarely a day passes that I do not make something, though it is not yet the real thing I want to make.
Well, sometimes it seems to me that I might soon become productive. I would not be at all surprised if it should happen someday.
Letter 229
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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It invigorates my pencil
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Cuesmes, 7 September 1880
I cannot tell you the pleasure Mr. Tersteeg gave me by letting me have the Exercices au Fusain and the Cours de Dessin Bargue for a while. I worked almost a whole fortnight on the former, from early morning until night, and daily I seem to feel that it invigorates my pencil. With no less eagerness - in fact, more - I am now copying “Les Travaux des Champs.” . . .
. . . I have already drawn “The Sower” five times, twice in small size, three times in large, and I will take it up again, I am so entirely absorbed in that figure.
Letter 135
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I have gained the open sea
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 3 September 1882
You can see that I am plunging full speed ahead into painting, I am plunging into color. I have refrained from doing so up till now and I am not sorry for it. Had I had not already done some drawing, I should be unable to get the feeling of, or be able to tackle, a figure that looks like an unfinished clay figurine. But now that I sense I have gained the open sea, painting must go full speed ahead as fast as we are able.
. . . I know for certain that I have a feeling for color and shall acquire more and more, that painting is in the very marrow of my bones.
Letter 228
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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This is just what I want
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 3 September 1882
I squeezed the roots and trunks in from the tube and modeled them a little with the brush.
Well, they are in there now, springing out of it, standing strongly rooted in it.
In a way I am glad that I never learned painting. In all probability I would then have learned to ignore such effects as this. Now I can say to myself, this is just what I want. If it is impossible, it is impossible, but I'm going to try it even though I don't know how it ought to be done. I don't know myself how I paint it, I just sit down with a white board in front of the spot that appeals to me, I look at what is in front of my eyes, and I say to myself: that white board has got to turn into something - I come back, dissatisfied, I lay it to one side and when I have rested a little, I go and look at it with a kind of awe. Then I am still dissatisfied, because I have that splendid scenery too much in my mind to be satisfied with what I made of it. Yet I can see in my work an echo of what appealed to me, I can see that the scenery has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have taken it down in shorthand. My shorthand may contain words that cannot be deciphered, mistakes or gaps, and yet there is something left of what the wood or the beach or the figure has told me, and it isn't in tame or conventional language derived from a studied manner or from some system, but from nature itself.
Letter 228
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Some significance, something to tell
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 3 September 1882
Yesterday evening I was working on a slightly rising woodland slope covered with dry and moldering beech leaves. . . . The problem, and I found it a very difficult one, was to get the depth of color, the enormous power and solidity of that ground . . . to retain the light as well as the glow . . . .
It was a hard job painting it. The ground used up one and a half large tubes of white - even though the ground is very dark - and for the rest red, yellow, brown, ochre, black, sienna, bistre, and the result is a reddish-brown, but one ranging from bistre to deep wine-red and to a pale, golden ruddiness. Then there are still the mosses and a border of fresh grass, which catches the light and glitters brightly, and is very difficult to capture. So there in the end you have it, a sketch that I maintain has some significance, something to tell, no matter what may be said about it.
I said to myself while I was doing it: don't let me leave before there is something of the autumnal evening in it, something mysterious, something important.
Letter 228
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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