Painters From The Netherlands

"I felt my energy revive, and said to myself, In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing. From that moment everything has seemed transformed for me."

"First and foremost, the masterly etching, 'The bush', by Daubigny/Ruisdael. [ Daubigny's etching 'The bush', he made after Jacob van Ruisdael ].. ..I plan to do two drawings, either in sepia or something else, one of them after this etching [by Daubigny] — the other [etching, made] after T. Rousseau's 'The oven in Les Landes'. This latter sepia is already done — it's true — but if you compare it with Daubigny's etching, you'll understand that it becomes weak, even though the sepia drawing considered on its own may very well have a certain tone and sentiment. I have to go back to it and work on it again.. ..I couldn't tell you how happy I feel to have taken up drawing again. It had already been on my mind for a long time, but I always saw the thing as impossible and beyond my reach."

"When I was.. ..in the surroundings of pictures and things of art.. .I then had a violent passion for them.. .And I do not repent it, for even now, far from that land, I am often homesick for the land of pictures. Now for more than five years already, I do not know exactly how long, I'm more or less without employment, wandering here and there.. .But you will ask what is your definite aim? That aim becomes more definite, will stand out slowly and surely, as the rough draft becomes a sketch and the sketch becomes a picture.. .. my only anxiety is: how can I be of use in the world, cannot I serve some purpose and be of any good, how can I learn more and study profoundly certain subjects?"

"..the best way to know God is to love many things. Love a friend, a wife, something, whatever you like.. .But one must love with a lofty and serious intimate sympathy, with strength, with intelligence... That leads to God, that leads to unwavering faith.. .To give you an example: someone loves Rembrandt, but seriously, - that man will know that there is a God, he will surely believe it.. .To try to understand the real significance, of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God.."

"Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way."

".You would also be mistaken if you [Theo] thought that I would do well to follow your advice literally, of becoming an engraver of bill-headings and visiting cards, or a bookkeeper or a carpenter's apprentice, - or else to devote myself to the baker's trade, - or many similar things.. ..that other people advise me."

"..Now there is in the South of Belgium, in Hainault, in the neighborhood of Mons.. ..a district called the Borinage, that has a peculiar population of laborers who work in the numerous coal mines.. .I should very much like to go there as an evangelist.. ..St. Paul was three years in Arabia before he began to preach.."

"If only we try to live sincerely, it will go well with us, even though we are certain to experience real sorrow, and great disappointments, and also will probably commit great faults and do wrong things, but it certainly is true, that it is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done."

"May God give me the wisdom which I need and grant me what I so fervently desire, that is, to finish my studies as quickly as possible and he ordained, so that I can perform the practical duties of a clergyman."

"When I am writing I instinctively make a little drawing now and then like the one I sent you lately, and for instance, this morning, Elijah in the Desert."

"original Dutch text: Wij wandelden aan den Buitenkant [Prins Hendrikkade] & daar aan die zandwerken aan de Oosterspoor (voormalig treinstation in Amsterdam), kan U niet zeggen hoe schoon het daar was in de schemering. Rembrandt, Michel (Franse Barbizon schilder) en anderen hebben het wel geschilderd, de grond donker, de lucht nog verlicht door den gloed van de ondergegane zon, de rei huizen en torens er boven uit, de lichten overal in de vensters, alles weerkaatsende in het water. En de menschen en rijtuigen als kleine zwarte figuurtjes overal. Zooals men dat op een Rembrandt soms ziet. En het stemde ons zoo dat wij over allerlei begonnen te spreken."

"We walked along Buitenkant and there by the sand works at the Oosterspoor [former train-station in Amsterdam], I can' tell you how beautiful it was there in the twilight. Rembrandt, Michel, [French Barbizon painter] and others have painted it, the ground dark, the sky still lit by the glow of the sun, already gone down, the row of houses and towers standing out above, the lights in the windows everywhere, everything reflected in the water. And the people and carriages like small black figures everywhere. Like one sometimes sees in a Rembrandt. And it put us in such a mood that we began talking about all sorts of things."

"You know what I want. If I may become a clergyman, if I fulfill that position so that my work is equal to that of our Father [who was a clergy-man], then I shall thank God. I have good hope that I shall succeed, it was once said to me by someone who was further on in life than I, and who was no stranger in Jerusalem:.. .I believe that you are a Christian, you see, it was so good for me to hear those words.. .It is good to believe that there is a God who knows what we need, better than we know it ourselves, and who helps us when we need help. It is also good to believe that, just as in the olden days, now, too, an angel is not far from those who feel godly sorrow.. .I've carefully read the story of Elijah so often, and so often has it given me strength up to now: [Vincent then quotes 1 Kings 19:3-15, leaving out all but the beginning of verses 14 and 15]"

"When we are working at a difficult task and strive after a good thing, we are fighting a righteous battle, the direct reward of which is that we are kept from much evil. As we advance in life it becomes more and more difficult, but in fighting the difficulties the inmost strength of the heart is developed."

"The love between brothers is a strong support through life, that is an old truth, let us look for that support, may experience strengthen the bond between us, and let us be true and outspoken toward each other, let there he no secrets — as it is now."

"..Our life is a pilgrim's progress. I once saw a very beautiful picture: it was a landscape at evening. In the distance on the right-hand side a row of hills appeared blue in the evening mist. Above those hills the splendour of the sunset, the grey clouds with their linings of silver and gold and purple. The landscape is a plain or heath covered with grass and its yellow leaves, for it was in autumn. Through the landscape a road leads to a high mountain far, far away, on the top of that mountain is a city wherein the setting sun casts a glory. On the road walks a pilgrim, staff in hand. He has been walking for a good long while already and he is very tired. And now he meets a woman, or figure in black, that makes one think of St. Paul's word: As being sorrowful yet always rejoicing. That Angel of God has been placed there to encourage the pilgrims and to answer their questions and the pilgrim asks her: Does the road go uphill then all the way? And the answer is: "Yes to the very end.""

"Text: Psalm 119:19. I am a stranger on the earth, hide not Thy command ments from me. Are we what we dreamt we should be? No, but still the sorrows of life.. .,so much more numerous than we expected, the tossing to and fro in the world, they have covered it over, but it is not dead, it sleepeth."

"Theo, your brother has preached for the first time last Sunday in God's dwelling.. ..it is a delightful thought that in the future wherever I shall come I shall preach the gospel; to do that well, one must have the gospel in one's heart, may the Lord give it to me."

"If I should find something it will probably be a position between clergy man and missionary in the suburbs of London among the working people. Do not speak to anybody about it yet."

"I am sure you will like it, it is such a fine business [art-dealer].. ..I am so glad that we shall both be in the same profession [art dealing] and in the same firm [Goupil and Co.]"

"My dear Theo, Feeling, even a fine feeling, for the beauties of nature isn't the same as religious feeling, although I believe that the two are closely connected. The same is true of a feeling for art. Don't give in to that too much either. Hold fast especially to your love for the firm [of the Paris' art dealers Goupil & C0, where both brothers worked - Vincent started in 1869 and Theo in 1873] and for your work.. ..Nearly everyone has a feeling for nature, some more than others, but there are few who feel that God is a spirit, and that they must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Pa is one of the few, Ma too, and also Uncle Vincent, I believe."

"There was a sale here [in Paris] of drawings by Millet, I don't know whether I've already written to you about it. When I entered the room in Hôtel Drouot where they were exhibited, I felt something akin to: 'Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground' [Bible-text]. You know that Millet lived [in his youth] in Gréville. Well, I don't know whether it was Gréville or Granville where the man I once told you about died. At any rate, I looked at Millet's drawings of 'The cliffs at Gréville', with redoubled attention."

"My dear Theo, Thanks for your letter of this morning. Yesterday I saw the Corot exhibition. It included a painting of the 'Mount of Olives'; I'm glad he painted that. On the right, a group of olive trees, dark against the darkening blue sky; in the background hills covered with shrubs and a couple of tall trees, above them the evening star.. .. I've also seen the Louvre and the Luxembourg, as you can imagine. The Ruisdaels in the Louvre are magnificent, especially 'The bush', 'The breakwater' and 'The ray of sunlight'. I wish you could see the small Rembrandts there, the 'Supper at Emmaus', and two pendants, 'The philosophers'."

"Some time ago I saw a painting by Thijs Maris [= Matthijs Maris, one of the three brothers Maris, all three famous Dutch impressionist painters of the Hague School ] that reminded me of it. An old Dutch town with rows of brownish red houses with step-gables and tall flights of steps, grey roofs, and white or yellow doors, window-frames and cornices; canals with ships and a large white drawbridge, a barge with a man at the tiller going under it.. .Some distance away a stone bridge over the canal, with people and a cart with white horses crossing it. And everywhere movement, a porter with his wheelbarrow, a man leaning against the railing, gazing into the water, women in black with white caps.. .A greyish white sky over everything..."

"I've got nature and art and poetry, and if that isn't enough, what is?"

"Vindt maar mooi zooveel je kunt, de meesten vinden niet genoeg mooi."

"Always continue walking a lot and loving nature, for that’s the real way to learn to understand art better and better. Painters understand nature and love it, and teach us to see."

"Now I think I know what you tried to say to me How you suffered for your sanity How you tried to set them free They would not listen they're not listening still... Perhaps they never will..."

"Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls Frameless heads on nameless walls with eyes that watch the world and can't forget. Like the stranger that you've met, the ragged man in ragged clothes The silver thorn of bloody rose, lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow."

"For they could not love you, but still your love was true And when no hope was left in sight, on that starry starry night You took your life as lovers often do, But I could have told you, Vincent, This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you."

"Weathered faces lined in pain are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand."

"Now I understand what you tried to say to me How you suffered for your sanity How you tried to set them free They would not listen they did not know how, perhaps they'll listen now."

"Starry Starry Night, paint your palette blue and grey Look out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul Shadows on the hills, sketch the trees and the daffodils Catch the breeze and the winter chills, in colors on the snowy linen land."

"Firstly for the design I decided that the two joined figures should be depicted upright [in Zadkine's first attempt the two brothers were sitting shoulder to shoulder].. ..two or three days later I was able to send him a photo of my new attempt, in which the two brothers are not only standing, but where the bond – the main idea is projected onto the statue in a hollow, in the heart of the composition the viewer can see a knot of hands, a symbol of the double inspiration."

"This exchange – mainly in the form of letters [ here all collected ] between the brothers van Gogh]] ] – was not only about painting and art, but covered everything to do with one's existence and the philosophical or religious colouring, in a word: for the reader of the letters written by Vincent to his brother a total of human behaviour is revealed that of the dual being of van Gogh. This is how my first wish and then obsession was started, to build a monument for the two van Gogh brothers [Zadkine made several sculptures of Vincent, and of the two brothers Theo & Vincent Van Gogh, in the 1950's]"

"..the bond is then shown to be a sort of identity of thought, of reaction to the endless small changes, taking place in one brother and immediately passed on to the other, because feeding an idea was always a double barrel, and was eventually enforced after the echo had passed between the two."

"I repeatedly told myself that the life of Vincent van Gogh and his colossal oeuvre – are not an individual outburst but a special and rare occurrence based on the special bond between the two brothers [Vincent and Theo], only broken by Vincent's suicide."

"To all the conflicting influences which had been showered on van Gogh, to the kindness of Pissarro, the cold systematization and a certain uncommunicativeness of Seurat, the lively proselytizing of Signac, Gauguin added a new element: a crude outspokenness, and occasional independence from nature, a vague tendency to use exaggeration as a means to go beyond impressionism."

"He went to work in Asnières together with Signac or Emile Bernard; he paid frequent visits to Guillaumin... he studied the masterpieces of the Louvre and particularly the paintings of Delacroix; he saw more or less frequently Toulouse-Lautrec, who had also been for a while under the influence of the impressionists; he had frantic discussions with almost every one of his new acquaintances, trying to absorb as much as he could... [H]e studied assiduously the paintings at the eighth impressionist exhibition ...he visited the Salon and later the Salon des Indépendants ...Theo and his painter friends also took him to Durand-Ruel's, to [Arsène] Portier's, to père Martin's and especially to the little place of père Tanguy. Van Gogh and père Tanquy quickly became fast friends, much to the distress of Mme Tanguy, who saw her husband supply the young man with canvas and paints (he used much of both) in return for unsaleable paintings. Cézanne... is supposed to have seen in these paintings only the work of a madman. But old Tanguy... divided his admiration equally between Cézanne and van Gogh."

"Van Gogh's work had hitherto been very dark, with scarcely any color, and he was at first bewildered by the rich coloring and the light which he discovered in the impressionist pictures. But when Pissarro explained to him the theory and technique of his own paintings, van Gogh began to experiment and immediately took to the new ideas with great enthusiasm. He completely changed his palette and his execution, even adopting for a while the neo-impressionist dot, although he used it without systematic ."

"Vincent... had come to Paris in the Spring of 1886 to live with his brother Theo and to acquaint himself with all the new art movements. ...[H]e felt a growing desire to see the paintings by the impressionists of which Theo spoke so often in letters. He also began to be preoccupied by the problems of simultaneous contrast and complementaries, which formed the basis of Seurat's theories. ...Theo took it upon himself to introduce his brother to the painters with whom he had dealings."

"Gauguin... [1886] chose to live in Pont-Aven, a well-known resort of artists. There he took quarters... favored by the pupils of Cormon and Julian... The young painter Emile Bernard, who paid him a visit at Schuffenecker's suggestion... managed to see some of his paintings and noted that "small brushstrokes weave the color and remind me of Pissarro; there is not much style." ...Eventually he admitted two painters to intimacy, and a young Frenchman ...who discreetly paid Gauguin's bills. It was through these that the others... learned of his ideas, of his frequently expressed admiration for Degas and Pissarro, of technical questions which preoccupied him and of his search... to preserve the intensity of colors. ...[T]he boldness of his approach left a deep impression on them ...When they returned to Paris ...the pupils of Cormon communicated their new experiences to their fellow students, who had already grieved their teacher... by their lively interest in Seurat's theories. Cormon had even temporarily closed his classes in protest at their revolutionary experiments... One of his pupils, Vincent van Gogh, thereupon had decided not to return... but to work on his own."

"Van Gogh wrote the most amazing autobiography."

"for me to look at a Van Gogh is to look at an artist who was trying to change how we look at the world."

"Paul Cézanne's painting is strictly painting, and its value is immense; but Van Gogh's painting has the Outsider's characteristic: it is a laboratory refuse of a man who treated his own life as an experiment in living; it faithfully records moods and developments of vision on the manner of a Bildungsroman."

"About Van Gogh.. ..a man who is on fire, a torch. His sincerity is absolute. His best painting is the grain field where he kills himself. There we find ourselves at the border of the art of painting. We cannot go further."

"Van Gogh.. .In this world of petty calculations, he was too intense. He frightened people. They cast him out."

"In the last letter which he [Vincent] wrote me and which dates from some four days before his death, it says, "I try to do as well as certain painters whom I have greatly loved and admired." People should realize that he was a great artist, something which often coincides with being a great human being. In the course of time this will surely be acknowledged, and many will regret his early death. He himself wanted to die, when I sat at his bedside and said that we would try to get him better and that we hoped that he would then be spared this kind of despair, he said, "La tristesse durera toujours" [The sadness will last forever]. I understood what he wanted to say with those words."

"I am very happy to be able to tell you that I met Dr. Gachet, that physician [which] Camille Pissarro mentioned to me. He gives the impression of being a man of understanding. Physically he is a little like you. As soon as you come here we are going to see him; he comes to Paris several times a week for consultations. When I told him how your crisis came about, he said to me that he didn't believe it had anything to do with madness, and that if it was what he thought he could guarantee your recovery, but that it was necessary for him to see you and to speak with you in order to be able to make a more definite statement."

"That head of his [Vincent] has been occupied with contemporary society's insoluble problems for so long, and he is still battling on with his good-heartedness and boundless energy. His efforts have not been in vain, but he will probably not live to see them come to fruition, for by the time people understand what he is saying in his paintings it will be too late. He is one of the most advanced painters and it is difficult to understand him, even for me who knows him so intimately. His ideas cover so much ground, examining what is humane and how one should look at the world, that one must first free oneself from anything remotely linked to convention to understand what he was trying to say, but I am sure he will be understood later on. It is just hard to say when."