Misfortune and disease

Vincent van Gogh to To Wilhelmina van Gogh, from Saint-Remy, 10 December 1889

While I was writing this letter I got up to order to put a few brush strokes on a canvas I'm working on - well, I don't know what thoughts came into my head while I was writing, but when I looked at my canvas I told myself it was not right. Then I took a color that was there on the palette, a dull dirty white, which you get by mixing white, green and a little carmine. I daubed this greenish tone all over the sky, and behold, at a distance it softens the tones, whereas one would think that one would spoil and besmirch the painting. Don't misfortune and disease do the same thing to us and to our health; and if fate ordains that we be unfortunate or sick, are we not in that case worth more than if we were serene and healthy according to our own vague ideas and desires with regard to possible happiness? I don't know…

When I compare them with others, some of my pictures certainly show traces of having been painted by a sick man, and I assure you that I don't do this on purpose. It's against my conscious will that all my calculations end in broken tones.

Letter W16
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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