Common cause

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Arles, 11 September 1888

If we had a common purse and make common cause, I think myself that after a few years' working in common we should all profit.

Because if the combination were arranged this way, you yourself would feel, I do not say happier, but a better artist, and more productive than with me alone.

Both Gauguin and I will feel strongly that we must succeed because the honor of all three of us is at stake, and that each is not working for himself alone. That's how it looks to me. And I believe that even if collapse is in the nature of things and bound to come, we must still act in the same way. But more and more I reject the idea of this collapse, when I think of the serenity you see on the faces in the Frans Halses and the Rembrandts, such as the portrait of old Six, or his self-portrait, or those Frans Halses in Haarlem that we know so well: pictures of old men and women.

It is better to have serenity than to be too timorous.

Letter 536
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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