All Quotes

"Some good must come by clinging to the right. Conscience is a man's compass, and though the needle sometimes deviates, though one often perceives irregularities in directing one's course by it, still one must try to follow its direction."

"And my intention is to try to form a collection of many such things, which would not be quite unworthy of the title 'heads of the people.' By working hard, boy, I hope to succeed in making something good. It isn't there yet, but I aim at it, and struggle for it. I want something serious, - some thing fresh - something with soul in it! Forward - forward -"

"There are things which we feel to be good and true, though in the cold light of reason and calculation many things remain incomprehensible and dark. And though the society in which we live considers such actions thoughtless, or reckless, or I don't know what else, what can we say if once the hidden forces of sympathy and love have been roused in us? And though it may be that we cannot argue against the reasoning sentiment and to act from impulse, one would almost conclude that some people have cauterized certain sensitive nerves within them, especially those which, combined, are called conscience. Well, I pity those people; they travel through life without compass, in my opinion."

"It constantly remains a source of disappointment to me that my drawings are not yet what I want them to be. The difficulties are indeed numerous and great, and cannot be overcome at once. To make progress is a kind of miner's work; it doesn't advance as quickly as one would like, and as others also expect, but as one stands before such a task, the basic necessities are patience and faithfulness. In fact, I do not think much about the difficulties, because if one thought of them too much one would get stunned or disturbed. A weaver who has to direct and to interweave a great many little threads has no time to philosophize about it, but rather he is so absorbed in his work that he doesn't think but acts, and he feels how things must go more than he can explain it. Even though neither you nor I, in talking together, would come to any definite plans, etc., perhaps we might mutually strengthen that feeling that something is ripening within us. And that is what I should like."

"Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it."

"When you [Theo] come you must see my woodcuts again. I've got some new ones since last time. It seemed to you perhaps as if the sun shone brighter and everything had acquired a new charm. At any rate, I believe this is always the effect of a serious love [Vincent doesn't call here his love Sien,] and that's a delightful thing.. .I can find no words for how beautiful the old courtyards are here. And although Jozef Israëls does it perfectly, so to speak, I find it strange that so relatively few pay them any attention. Here in The Hague every day, so to speak, I see a world which a great many pass by and which is very different from what most are making. And wouldn't dare say this if I hadn't had the experience of figure painters actually passing it by as well, and remembered walking with them and, when I was struck by this or that figure we encountered, hearing repeatedly 'Oh, but those filthy folk' or 'that sort of people' — in short, expressions one wouldn't expect from a painter."

"The work is an absolute necessity for me. I can't put it off, I don't care for anything but the work; that is to say, the pleasure in something else ceases at once and I become melancholy when I can't go on with my work. Then I feel like a weaver who sees that his threads are tangled, and the pattern he had on the loom is gone to hell, and all his thought and exertion is lost."

"Your description of Troyon and Rousseau, for instance, is lively enough to give me some idea of which of their manners they are done in. There were other paintings from the time of Troyon's municipal pasture that had a certain 'mood' that one would have to call 'dramatic', even though they aren't figure paintings."

"Speaking of Rousseau, do you know Richard Wallace's [owner of a] Rousseau? ['The forest of Fontainebleau': Morning, a landscape, with cattle drinking, c. 1850] An edge of a wood in the autumn after rain, with a vista of meadows stretching away endlessly, marshy, with cows in them, the foreground rich in tone. To me that's one of the finest — is very like the one with the red sun in the Luxembourg ['The edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, at sunset', c. 1849]. The dramatic effect of these paintings is something that helps us to understand 'a corner of nature seen through a temperament' ["

"Involuntarily and without any definite motive, I had a thought that often occurs to me. Not only did I begin drawing relatively late in life, but it may also be that I shall not live for so very many years to come.. .I think I may presume without rashness: that my body will keep a certain number of years "quand bien meme" - a certain number, say between six and ten years for instance.. .This is the period on which I reckon firmly."

"Boughton together with Abbey are making for Harper in New York drawings called "Picturesque Holland".. ..now I say to myself if the Graphic and Harper send their draughtsmen to Holland they would perhaps not be unwilling to accept a draughtsman from Holland [Vincent himself], if he can furnish some good work for not too much money. I should prefer to be accepted on regular monthly wages rather than to sell a drawing now and then at a relatively high price."

"Do you know what I long for sometimes? To make a trip to Brabant. I should love to draw the old churchyard at Nuenen, and the weavers. To make, for instance, during a month, studies of Brabant, and to come back [to The Hague] with a lot of them, for a large drawing of a peasant funeral for instance."

"My intention is to make in Drenthe so much progress in painting that when I come back I may be qualified for the 'Society of Draughtsmen' [a group of London illustrators]. This stands again in connection with the second plan of going to England [to become an illustrator]."

"..The thought crossed my mind, how society today in its fall, at moments seen against the light of a renewal, stands out as a large, gloomy silhouette. Yes, for me, the drama of storm in nature, the drama of sorrow in life, is the most impressive."

"I tell you, brother, I am not good from a clergyman's point of view. I know full well that, frankly speaking, prostitutes are bad, but I feel something human in them which makes me feel not the least scruple to associate with them; I see nothing very wrong in them.. .And now, as in other periods of decline of civilization, the corruption of society has turned upside down all relations of good and evil, and one falls back logically on the old saying: "The first shall be last and the last shall be first"."

"As I feel a need to speak out frankly, I cannot hide from you that I am overcome by a feeling of great care, depression, a "je ne sais quoi" of discouragement and despair more than I can tell. I take it so much to heart that I do not get on better with people in general; it quite worries me because on it depends so much my success in carrying out my work."

"There is a saying by Gustave Dore which I have always admired: "J'ai la patience d'un boeuf." [I have the patience of an ox]. I find in it a certain goodness, a certain resolute honesty, more, it has a deep meaning that saying, it is the word of a real artist. When one thinks of the men from whose heart such a saying sprang, all the arguments one too often hears of art dealers about "natural gifts", seem to become a terrible raven's croaking."

"If you hear a voice within you saying, "You are not a painter," then by all means paint, boy, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working. He who goes to trends and tells his troubles when he feels like that loses part of his manliness, part of the best that's in him; your friends can only be those who themselves struggle against it, who raise your activity by their own example of action."

"And my aim in my life is to make picture and drawings, as many and as well as I can, then, at the end of my life, I hope to pass away, looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking: "Oh, pictures I might have made!" Theo, I declare I prefer to think how arms, legs, head are attached to the trunk, rather than whether I myself am or am not more or less an artist."

"I am busy painting every day studies of the weavers here, which I think are technically better than the painted studies from Drenthe, which I sent you."

"Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy... .I have not yet had enough experience with women. What we were taught about them in our youth is quite wrong, that is sure, it was quite contrary to nature, and one must try to learn from experience. It would be very pleasant if everybody were good, and the world were good, etc. - yes - but it seems to me that we see more and more that we are not good, no more than the world in general, of which we are an atom - and the world no more good than we are. One may try one's best, or act carelessly, the result is always different from what one really wanted. But whether the result be better or worse, fortunate or unfortunate, it is better to do something than to do nothing. If only one is wary of becoming a prim, self-righteous prig - as Uncle Vincent calls it - one may be even as good as one likes."

"Now I ask you whether you yourself have not often noticed that the policy of floating between the old and the new is not tenable? Just think this over. Sooner or later it ends with one's standing frankly either to the right or to the left. It is no ditch, and I repeat, then it was '48 [the 1848 Revolutions in Europe,] now it is '84 [1884]; then there was a barricade of paving stones - now it is not of stones, but a barricade as to the incompatibility of old and new."

"And it's certain that unexpected new ideas are beginning to emerge. That paintings are once again beginning to be painted in very different tone from a few years ago. The last thing I made is a rather large study of an avenue of poplars with the yellow autumn leaves, where the sun makes glittering patches here and there on the fallen leaves on the ground, which are interspersed with the long shadows cast by the trunks. At the end of the road a peasant cottage, and the blue sky above it between the autumn leaves. I think that in a year's time — having spent that year once again painting a great deal and constantly — I'll change my manner of painting and my colour a great deal, and that I'm likely to become slightly more sombre rather than lighter."

"Le financier est la désolation de l’artiste."

"Now, there are people who say to me "Why did you have anything to do with her," — that's one fact. And there are people who say to her, "Why did you have anything to do with him," — that's another fact. Apart from that, both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets — neither of us have any. Look here — I believe without question, or have the certain knowledge, that she loves me. I believe without question, or have the certain knowledge, that I love her. It has been sincerely meant. But has it also been foolish, etc? Perhaps, if you like — but aren't the wise ones, those who never do anything foolish, even more foolish in my eyes than I am in theirs?"

"You will say that I am not a success - vaincre or être vaincu, [to conquer or to be conquered], it doesn't matter to me, one has feeling and movement in any event, and they are more akin than they may seem to be or than can be put into words."

"Oh, I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its Founder was sublime - I have seen through present-day Christianity only too well. That icy coldness hypnotized even me, in my youth - but I have taken my revenge since then. How? By worshipping the love which they, the theologians, call sin, by respecting a whore [ Sien in The Hague ]), etc., and not too many would-be respectable, pious ladies. To some, woman is heresy and diabolical. To me she is just the opposite."

"Oh, Theo, why should I change - I used to be very passive and very gentle and quiet — I'm that no longer, but then I'm no longer a child either now - sometimes I feel my own man."

"There is no blue without yellow and without orange, and if you put in blue, then you must put in yellow, and orange too, mustn't you? Oh well, you will tell me that what I write to you are only banalities."

"I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm - but that's a lie, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity. Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, You can't do a thing. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerises some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of 'you can't' once and for all. Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily. He wades in and does something and stays with it, in short, he violates, "defiles" - they say. Let them talk, those cold theologians."

"I repeat, let us paint as much as we can and be productive, and be ourselves with all our faults and qualities; I say us, because the money from you [Theo], which I know costs you trouble enough to procure me, gives you the right, when there is some good in my work, to consider half of it your creation."

"My dear Theo, Sincere wishes for your good health and serenity on your birthday. I would like to have sent you the painting of the potato eaters for this day, but although it's coming along well, it's not quite finished yet. Although I'll have painted the actual painting in a relatively short time, and largely from memory, it's taken a whole winter of painting studies of heads and hands. And as for the few days in which I've painted it now - it's consequently been a formidable fight, but one for which I have great enthusiasm. Although at times I feared that it wouldn't come off. But painting is also 'act and create'."

"If you saw the first painted color-studies that I made when I came here to Nuenen [1883] - and the present canvas [1885] - side by side - I think you'd see that as far as colour is concerned - things have livened up. I think that the question of the breaking of colours in the relationships of the colours will occupy you too one day. For as an art expert and critic, one must also, it seems to me - be sure of one's ground and have certain convictions. At least for one's own pleasure and to be able to give reasons, and at the same time one must be able to explain it in a few words to others, who sometimes turn to someone like you for enlightenment when they want to know something more about art."

"When I call myself a peasant painter, that is a real fact, and it will become more and more clear to you in the future, I feel at home there. By witnessing peasant life continually at all hours of the day I have become so absorbed in it that I hardly ever think of anything else."

"I hope.. ..to paint some in a lighter gamut, more flesh and blood, but, at the same time, I am trying to get a still stronger soft soap and copper-like effect. In reality I daily see, in the gloomy huts, effects against the light or in the evening twilight.. ..which I compare to soft soap and brass color of a worn-out 10 centime piece."

"What surprising fellows those French painters are. A Millet, Delacroix, Corot, Troyon, Daubigny, Rousseau, and a Daumier.. ..Something else about Delacroix - he had a discussion with a friend about the question of working absolutely from nature, and said on that occasion that one should take one's 'studies' from nature - but that the 'actual painting' had to be made 'by heart'. This friend was walking along the boulevard when they had this discussion - which was already fairly heated. When they parted the other man was still not entirely persuaded. After they parted, Delacroix let him stroll on for a bit - then (making a trumpet of his two hands) bellowed after him in the middle of the street - to the consternation of the worthy passers-by: 'By heart! By heart!' (Par coeur! Par coeur!) I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading this article and some other things about Delacroix.."

"The work in question, painting the peasants, is such laborious work that the extremely weak would never even embark on it. And I have at least embarked on it.. .And I've grasped some solid and useful things in drawing and in painting, more firmly than you think, my dear friend. But I keep on making what I can't do yet in order to learn to be able to do it.. .We have in common with each other that we seek our subjects in the heart of the people, and then we have in common a need — either as an objective or as a means — to take our studies from reality."

"But tell me, black and white, may they be used or not, are they forbidden fruit? You . . . think that when the shadows are dark, ay, black, that it is all wrong then, don't you? I don't think so.. .Rembrandt and Hals, didn't they use black? And Velasquez???"

"It is hard, terribly hard, to keep on working when one does not sell, and one literally has to pay for one's colors from what would not be too much for eating, drinking and lodgings, calculated ever so strictly. And then, besides, the models.. .All the same they are building State museums, and the like, for hundreds of thousands, but meanwhile, the artists can go to the dogs."

"..How glad I was when this doctor took me for an ordinary workingman and said: "I suppose you are an iron worker." That is just what I have tried to change in myself; when I was younger, I looked like one who has been intellectually overwrought, and now I look like a skipper or an iron worker."

"..I went to live in my studio on the first of May [?].. .I have not had a hot dinner more than perhaps six or seven times since. I have lived then and I do so here, not having money for dinner, because the work costs me too much and I have trusted too much on my being strong enough to hold out. Now I have made it worse by smoking a great deal, which I do the more because then one does not feel an empty stomach so much.. .My opinion is that one must not think that the people whose health is damaged, quite or partly, are no good for painting.. .It fell so unexpectedly on me, I had been feeling weak and feverish, but I went on notwithstanding, but I began to feel worried when more and more teeth broke off, and I began to look more and more ill."

"This one thing remains: faith; one feels instinctively that many things are changing and that everything will change. We are living in the last quarter of a century which will end again in an enormous revolution.. ..we shall certainly not live to see the better times of pure air and the refreshing of the old society after those big storms. We are still in the closeness but the following generations will be able to breathe in freely."

"As well as the greatest optimist I see the lark soaring in the spring air, but I also see a young girl of about twenty, who might have been in good health, a victim to consumption, and who will perhaps drown herself before she dies of an illness. If one is always in respectable company among rather well-to-do bourgeois one does not notice this so much perhaps, but if one has dined for years on 'la vache enragee', as I did, one cannot deny that great misery is a fact that weighs down the scale."

"Don't be cross with me that I've come all of a sudden [to move from Antwerp to Paris]. I've thought about it so much and I think we'll save time this way. Will be at the Louvre from midday, or earlier if you like. A reply, please, to let me know when you could come to the Salle Carrée. As for expenses, I repeat, it comes to the same thing. I have some money left, that goes without saying, and I want to talk to you before spending anything."

"In Antwerp I did not even know what the Impressionists were, now I have seen them and though not being one of the club, yet I have much admired certain Impressionist pictures – Degas, nude figure – Claude Monet, landscape. And now for what regards what I myself have been doing, I have lacked money for paying models, else I had entirely given myself to figure painting but I have made a series of colour studies in painting simply flowers, red poppies, blue corn flowers and myosotys. White and rose roses, yellow chrysantemums – seeking oppositions of blue with orange, red and green, yellow and violet, seeking THE BROKEN AND NEUTRAL TONES to harmonise brutal extremes. Trying to render intense COLOUR and not a grey harmony."

"And at times already I feel old and broken.. .To succeed one must have ambition, and ambition seems to me absurd. What will come of it I don't know ; I would like above all things to be less of a burden to you.. .I hope to make such progress that you will be able to show my stuff boldly without compromising yourself. And then I will take myself off somewhere down south, to get away from the sight of so many painters that disgust me as men."

"If, therefore, you've already considered that Signac and the others who are doing pointillism often make very beautiful things with it - Instead of running those things down, one [Bernhard] should respect them and speak of them sympathetically, especially when there's a falling out. Otherwise one becomes a narrow sectarian oneself, and the equivalent of those who think nothing of others and believe themselves to be the only righteous ones. This extends even to the academic painters, because take, for example, a painting by Fantin-Latour — and above all his entire oeuvre. Well then — there's someone who hasn't rebelled, and does that prevent him, that indefinable calm and righteousness that he has, from being one of the most independent characters in existence?"

"Like me, for instance, who can count so many years in my life when I completely lost all inclination to laugh, leaving aside whether or not this was my own fault, I for one need above all just to have a good laugh. I found that in Guy de Maupassant and there are others here, Rabelais among the old writers, Henri Rochefort among today's, where one can find that — Voltaire in 'Candide'. On the contrary, if one wants truth, life as it is, De Goncourt, for example, in 'Germinie Lacerteux', 'La fille Elisa', Zola in 'La joie de vivre' and 'L'assommoir' and so many other masterpieces paint life as we feel it ourselves and thus satisfy that need which we have, that people tell us the truth. The work of the French naturalists Zola, Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant, De Goncourt, Richepin, Daudet, Huysmans is magnificent and one can scarcely be said to belong to one's time if one isn't familiar with them."

"It seems to me almost impossible to work in Paris [he just left Paris] unless one has some place of retreat where one can revive oneself and get back one's tranquility and poise. Without that one would get hopelessly brutalized."

"I brought home a no.15 canvas today, it's a drawbridge, with a little carriage going across it, outlined against a blue sky — the river blue as well, the banks orange with greenery, a group of washerwomen wearing blouses and multicoloured bonnets.. .But, my dear brother — you know, I feel I'm in Japan. I say no more than that, and again, I've seen nothing yet in its usual splendour. That's why (even while being worried that at the moment expenses are steep and the paintings of no value), that's why I don't despair of success in this enterprise of going on a long journey in the south. Here I'm seeing new things, I'm learning.."