| | 4 letters relate to attitude - parents... | Excerpt length: shorter longer | |
| Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(26 July 1882)
... distance, better light, more room.
Last night I received a parcel from home. Among other things
there was a sort of spring coat, which comes in very handy. I
thought it very kind of them. And there was tobacco in it, and
cigars, and cake and some underwear. In short, quite a parcel.
Wasn't that nice of them? I appreciate it perhaps more for the
kind thought than for anything else.
I also had a letter from Van Rappard.
I am confoundedly pleased that the fellow is so absorbed in
his English wood engravings. It is true I encouraged him in the
beginning, but now he no longer needs any encouragement, he is
almost as enthusiastic about it as I. When you come, I will
show you a few which you will not soon forget after you have
seen them. And there are things among them quite different from
Boughton's style, for instance, though he certainly is also one
of the main ones. I mean things remarkable for their reality
and style, like Albrecht Dürer's, and yet at the same time
... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(19 August 1882)
... agree with several
points in your letter. Especially, I fully agree that, with all
their good and bad qualities, Father and Mother are the kind of
people who are becoming rare in the present time - more and
more rare - and perhaps the new type is not at all better - and
so one must appreciate them that much more.
Personally, I do indeed appreciate them. I am only afraid
that the feeling about which you reassured them for the time
being would come back, especially if they saw me again. They
will never be able to understand what painting is. They cannot
understand that the figure of a labourer—some furrows in
a ploughed field - a bit of sand, sea and sky—are serious
subjects, so difficult, but at the same time so beautiful, that
it is indeed worth while to devote one's life to expressing the
poetry hidden in them.
In the future, whenever they saw me toiling and pegging away
at my work — scraping it out and changing it — now
severely comparing it to... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(8 October 1882)
... necessary. I also owe
Stam something.
Just imagine, this week to my great surprise I received a
parcel from home, with a winter coat, a pair of warm trousers
and a warm woman's coat. It touched me very much.
I can't get that churchyard with the wooden crosses out of
my mind. Perhaps I shall make some studies of it beforehand. I
should like to make it in the snow - a peasant's burial or the
like - in short, an effect like the enclosed sketch of
miners . To complete the seasons, I am sending
you a little sketch of the spring and another
of the fall; they came into my mind while I was making the
first one.
How beautiful it is outside now! I try my best to catch the
autumn effects. I am writing you in a great hurry. I can assure
you those compositions with figures are no joke, and I am deep
in my work. It is like weaving - one needs all one's attention
to keep the threads apart - one must manage to keep an eye on
several things at once.
The little drawing... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(c. 20 December 1889)
... me more than
before.
And then I think so much of you and of the past. You and
Father have been, if possible, even more to me than to the
others, so much, so very much, and I do not seem to have had a
happy character. I discovered that in Paris, how much more Theo
did his best to help Father practically than I, so that his own
interests were often neglected. Therefore I am so thankful now
that Theo has got a wife and is expecting his baby. Well, Theo
had more self-sacrifice than I, and that is deeply rooted in
his character. And after Father was no more and I came to Theo
in Paris, then he became so attached to me that I understood
how much he had loved Father. And now I am saying this to you,
and not to him - it is a good thing that I did not stay in
Paris, for we, he and I, would have become too interested in
each other.
And life does not exist for this, I cannot tell you how much
better I think it is for him this way than in the past, he had
too many tiresome... |
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