Not to be discouraged

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

More and more I believe that l'art pour l'art, to work for work's sake, l'energie pour l'energie - is after all the principle of all great artists, for in the case of the de Goncourts one sees how necessary obstinacy is, for society will not thank them for it.

But in painting one finds a certain rest in the histories of those painters who aimed at the most sublime through it all.

Israels himself, for instance, was still quite unknown and poor, even to the extent of having nothing to eat but dry bread - when he nevertheless wanted to go to Paris, though the circumstances were discouraging enough.

Not to be discouraged, even though one is almost starving, and though one feels one has to say farewell to all material comfort in life!

Letter 448
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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A certain obstinacy

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Nuenen, 7 December 1884

I let people say and think what they like of me, more than you perhaps suppose, but be sure of this, when a thing turns out wrong, that's no reason for me to admit that I ought not to have begun it; on the contrary, if it fails many a time, it is a reason for me to try again if the very same thing is not possible yet, and always in the same direction, as my views are well considered and calculated, and in my opinion have their raison d'etre.

I cannot bother about what people think of me, what I have to think of is getting on.

So I go my own way with a certain obstinacy, believing in some things and not believing in others.

Letter 388
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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Many who undertake to change

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Nuenen, 8-12 November 1885

Now as to that acquaintance of mine and his opinion of pictures; when someone with a clear intelligent head paints still life and works out-of-doors every day, if only for a year, he need not therefore be an art critic, neither does he feel he is a painter yet, but for all that he will observe more originally than many others.

Besides, his character is not just like everybody's, for instance, he was originally intended to become a priest, at a certain moment he flatly refused this, and carried his point, in which not exactly every one in Brabant succeeds. And there is something broad-minded and loyal about him.

Zola once referred to this something in a conversation between Mouret and his school-fellow, when he let Mouret get serious and say that it had cost him a great deal to free himself from that time and its influence, but that he had wanted to live and that he had lived. Many who undertake to change fall back, don't come any further than a certain insipid methodism because they don't take their measures energetically enough.

Letter 431
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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One has to seek for light a long time

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Nuenen, early November 1885

I am completely absorbed in the laws of colors. If only they had taught us them in our youth!

But it is the fate of most people that by a kind of fatality one has to seek for light a long time. For, that the laws of color which Delacroix was the first to use, like Newton did for gravitation, and like Stephenson did for steam - that those laws of colors are a ray of light - is absolutely certain.

Letter 430
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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I hate this so much

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, c. 2 March 1883

I should not want anybody to see just this one sketch of mine, because I myself think nothing is right in this sketch except the general aspect, and I will wrestle with the figures till I get in watercolor what they are beginning to get in lithography - that is, more character and effect.

It is not pleasant to make sketches like the one I sent you, and then not to be able to finish them; I hate this so much that I rarely make them, except as a trial to see if I have made any progress. But now I have new courage and interest, just because I have been making a great many studies again. . . .

The desire to make them is not wanting, but I expect new failures - which I hope, however will have something in them to encourage rather than to make one lose courage though they are failures.

Letter 270
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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