"A job on the side"

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Nuenen, mid-November 1885

In de Goncourt's book I found the following sentence in the article about Chardin marked by you. After having talked about the bad financial conditions of painters, he says: "What to do, what to become? One must throw oneself into a subordinate condition or starve. One chooses the first", so, he continues, except a few martyrs, the rest become fencing masters, soldiers or actors.

Now it always makes a fatal impression on the public when the painter "takes a job on the side." I don't feel above this at all, but I should say, Go on painting, just make a hundred, and if that is not enough, two hundred studies, and see if this doesn't help you more than the “job on the side.”

Accustoming oneself to poverty, seeing how a soldier or a laborer lives and thrives in wind and weather, with ordinary people's fare and dwelling, is just as practical as earning a few guilders more a week.

After all, one is not in the world for one's own comfort, and one does not need to be better off than one's neighbor.

Letter 433
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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