Simple and true

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Antwerp, early January 1886

I am working on my portraits all the time, and at last I have made two which are decidedly good "likenesses" (one profile and one three-quarter). That isn't everything, it isn't even the most important thing. But it still seems to me worth while to aim at it, and perhaps it teaches one to draw.

In "The Deposition from the Cross" by Van Dyck, the large one, that one high up - there is also a portrait, decidedly a portrait - not only of a head, but, thank God, of a whole figure, splendid in yellow and lilac, a weeping woman bending over, the torso and the legs under the clothes well and intimately felt and expressed. Then art is high, when it is simple and true.

Letter 443
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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