| | 36 letters relate to Theo - work... | Excerpt length: shorter longer | |
| Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(3 June 1883)
... and worked on them early and late.
I am sorry to hear from you that business is rather slack;
if circumstances become more difficult, let us redouble our
energy. I will be doubly intent on my drawings, but for the
present do be doubly intent on sending the money. To me it
means models, studio, bread; cutting it down would be something
like choking or drowning me. I mean, I can do as little without
it now as I can do without air. I had these two drawings in my
heart for a long time, but I did not have the money to carry
them out; and now, thanks to Rappard's money, they have got
form. The creative power cannot be repressed, one must give
vent to what one feels.
Do you know what I often think? I should like to get into
contact with the Graphic or London News in England. Now that I
am getting on with it, I should like so much to continue a few
large compositions suitable for illustration.
Boughton and Abbey together are making drawings called
“Picturesque Holland”... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(13 October 1883)
... you at heart, the
true artist.”
You have undergone unsought, harrowing mental sufferings;
now things are running their course. Why? Whither? To the
renewed beginning of a similar career? My decided opinion is -
no - there is something deeper than that. Change you must - but
it must be a general renewal, not a repetition of the same
thing. You wee not wrong in the past, no, in the past you had
to be as you were; that past was right. But does it follow that
it was not simply a preparation, a basis, nothing but a
schooling, and not a definite thing yet? Why shouldn't that
follow? In my opinion it is exactly that.
I think things speak so much for themselves that it would be
impossible for me to tell you anything that is not already
quite evident, even to yourself. Besides, it strikes me as
rather curious that there is a change in me of late.
That just now I find myself in surroundings which so
entirely engross me, which so order, fix, regulate, renew,
enlarge... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(c. 22 October 1883)
... suppose that you thought differently about it. I
think your idea of changing your situation is a very rational
one. In the first place, one is not obliged to wait for the
moment when the employers will arrive at a better insight; and
in the second place, if one considered oneself obliged to do
so, one might go on waiting forever and ever, and a young
employee might doubt whether, when that moment came, he would
not be too tired to redress things; how much more would this be
the case with the old “pochards pleins” themselves.
The latter will have lost their wits entirely by then; and
decadence being decadence, a deserved ruin of a business will
follow, the fatal consequence of certain mistakes. I don't mean
to say it is if it happens through thoughtlessness, but if it
happens through that odious, wanton, capricious, reckless way
of outliving one's fame, and through supposing that everything
is only a question of money, and that anything is allowed; it
may succeed many a time,... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(c. 3 November 1883)
... boldly with the idea: Painter.
I am afraid, my dear fellow, that if you engage in new
things, in the first place you will waste your time; in the
second place, it will turn out a failure, because the shock of
being uprooted will prove too strong for you, and in the third
place you will lose more than you gain. Should you insist on
taking this road, and once more engage in business affairs in
Paris, America or elsewhere, I should quietly let you have your
own way, but on the back of this page I have uttered my
presentiments clearly enough so that you can decide for
yourself whether I take a wrong view of things; to me it is
pretty clear that these consequences are highly probable.
Well, dear fellow, what I advise you is something quite new.
Foi de charbonnier in art, instead of saying (and to me it is
twaddle), I can't do anything, I am not an artist, do not
attribute qualities to me that I do not possess, and all that
rubbish. I tell you this is a delusion, and now, my... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(1 December 1883)
... to a
misunderstanding between you and me. There was a moment when
you were very melancholy and wrote me as follows: “My
employers make the situation almost impossible for me, and I
even believe they would rather dismiss me than let me
resign” (the latter exactly my case at the time). And
you said some things about the idea of painting at least not
being uncongenial to you.
Well - then I told you frankly all my thoughts about the
possibility of your becoming a painter; I said, “You
can do it if only you want to, and I believe in you
as an artist, from the moment you take up the
brush,” though nobody else might.
What I told you about this I said to you in order to make it
clear that whatever misfortune - calamity - may overtake you in
the future, to me the real misfortune is the one which prevents
you from deciding on “a complete renewal” now. I am
of the opinion that, if you, a human being, were overtaken by a
... |
<< Previous Next >> 36 results found
Showing matches 19 - 23 |
