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| Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(c. 7 July 1888)
... they will be criticized as hasty.
I know also that I hope to stick to my argument of this
winter, when we were talking about an association of artists.
Not that I still have any great desire for it or hope to
realize it, but as it was seriously thought out, it is our duty
to go on taking it seriously and to retain the right to come
back to the question.
If Gauguin won't come to work with me, then I have no other
means than my work to set against my expenses. This prospect is
only moderately alarming. If my health does not betray me, I
shall polish off my canvases, and there will be some that will
do among them.
I am almost reconciled to the orchard , the one not on
stretchers, and its pendant with the stippling . They may pass
muster in the crowd. But I have less trouble working in
the full heat than I did in the spring. I shall soon send you
some rolled-up canvases, and the others one by one, as it
becomes possible to roll them.
I should very much... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Emile Bernard
(c. 17 July 1888)
... colour
and the logical composition.
My dear friend Bernard, by collaboration I did not
mean to say that I think two or more painters would have to
work on the same pictures. What I was driving at was paintings
that differ from one another yet go together and complement one
another.
Just take the Italian primitives or the German primitives or
the Dutch school or the real Italians, in short, take the whole
of the art of painting!
Whether they want it or not, their work forms a
“group,” a “series.”
Well, now, at present the impressionists also form a group,
despite all their disastrous civil wars, in which both sides
have been trying to get at each other's throats with a
dedication they would have done better to reserve for other
ends.
In our northern school, you have Rembrandt, who heads that
school because his influence may be seen in anyone who comes to
know him more closely. Thus we find Paulus Potter painting
rutting... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(c. 13 August 1888)
... handshake.
Ever yours, Vincent
With regard to Gauguin, however much we appreciate him, I
think that we must behave like the mother of a family and
calculate the actual expenses. If one listened to him, one
would go on hoping for something vague in the future, and
meantime stay on at the inn, and go on living in a hell with no
way out.
I would rather shut myself up in a cloister like the monks,
free as the monks are to go to the brothel or the wine shop if
the spirit moves us. But for our work we need a home.
Altogether Gauguin leaves me quite in the dark about Pont-Aven;
he tacitly accepts my suggestion of coming to him if necessary,
but he writes nothing about any means of finding a studio of
our own, or about what it would cost to furnish it. And I can't
help feeling there's something queer about it.
So I have decided not to go to Pont-Aven, unless we could
find a house there at a low rent like the one here (15 fr. per
month is what mine costs) and could arrange... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(c. 18 August 1888)
... and the 100-fr. note
enclosed.
And it's very good of you to promise the two of us, Gauguin
and me, that you'll put us in the way to carrying out our
combination.
I have just had a letter from Bernard, who went some days
ago to join Gauguin, Laval and somebody else at Pont-Aven. It
was a very decent letter, but not one syllable in it about
Gauguin intending to join me, and not a syllable either about
wanting me to come there. All the same it was a very friendly
letter.
From Gauguin himself not a word for almost a month.
I myself think that Gauguin would rather try to fight his
way through with his friends in the North, and if by good luck
he sells one or more pictures, he may have other plans for
himself than coming to join me.
But haven't I, with less desire than he for the struggle in
Paris, the right to go my own way? Look here. As soon as you
can, would you, not give, but lend me 300 francs in one lump
sum for a year? Then, if I take it that at present... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(3 September 1888)
... at the bullfight and outside the
town. We talked more seriously about the plan, that if I keep a
place in the south, he ought to set up a sort of post among the
collieries. Then Gauguin and I and he, if the importance of a
picture made it worth the journey, could change places - and so
be sometimes in the north, but in familiar country with a
friend in it, and sometimes in the south.
You will soon see him, this young man with the look of
Dante, because he is going to Paris, and if you put him up - if
the room is free - you will be doing him a good turn; he is
very distinguished in appearance, and will become so, I think,
in his painting.
He likes Delacroix, and we talked a lot about Delacroix
yesterday. He even knew the violent study for the “Bark
of Christ.”
Well, thanks to him I have at last a first sketch of that
picture which I have dreamt of for so long - the poet . He posed
for me. His line head with that keen gaze stands out in my
portrait against... |
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