van Gogh's letters - unabridged and annotated
 
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18721891

 26 letters relate to business - co-op...Excerpt length: shorter longer  
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...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(4 September 1888)
... out as far as colours are concerned. Neither Gauguin nor Bernard has written again. I think that Gauguin doesn't care a damn about it, because it isn't going to be done at once, and I for my part, seeing that Gauguin has managed to muddle along by himself for six months, am ceasing to believe in the urgent necessity of helping him. So let's be prudent. If it does not suit him here, he may be forever reproaching me with, “Why did you bring me to this rotten country?” And I don't want any of that. Naturally we can still remain friends with Gauguin but I see only too clearly that his mind is elsewhere. So I say, let's behave as if he were not there; then if he comes, so much the better - if he doesn't, so much the worse. How I'd like to settle down and have a home! I keep thinking that even it we had spent 500 francs on furniture at the start, we should already have recovered all of it and I should have the furniture and should already have been delivered from ...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(c. 11 September 1888)
... is complicated by the payment of a debt. Unless Gauguin pooled everything and let you have all his work, so that we'd keep no accounts but make common cause together. If we had a common purse and make common cause, I think myself that after a few years' working in common we should all profit. Because if the combination were arranged this way, you yourself would feel, I do not say happier, but a better artist, and more productive than with me alone. Both he and I will feel strongly that we must succeed because the honour of all three of us is at stake, and that each is not working for himself alone. That's how it looks to me. And I believe that even if collapse is in the nature of things and bound to come, we must still act in the same way. But more and more I reject the idea of this collapse, when I think of the serenity you see on the faces in the Frans Halses and the Rembrandts, such as the portrait of old Six, or his self-portrait, or those Frans Halses in Haarlem that...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(c. 26 September 1888)
... drawings in the style of the others. I wrote to him that since Gauguin had not definitely stated if he would come or would not come I could not offer Bernard the free hospitality, or even paid in pictures or drawings. That here just his food alone would cost him in any case a bit more that food and lodging up where he currently is. A bit less perhaps if we ate in the studio, with or without Gauguin, we could make some savings. But that in any case I didn't urge him to come. That as I counted on wintering here, certainly his company would be very welcome, but that above all he must do his calculations well. If one of these days Gauguin writes to you definitely, either to you or to me, we will be able to see again about Bernard. I think myself that Bernard would certainly find his business here but his father should be a little bit more magnanimous in his regard. Because Bernard is painstaking. - I don't like these drawings, however, as much that the previous ...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(28 September 1888)
... send you his letter with the replies. Certainly his arrival would be an increase of 100 percent in the importance of this enterprise of doing painting in the Midi. And once here, I don't see him leaving again because I believe that he would take root here. And I always tell myself that what you are doing in private would in the end, with his collaboration, be a more serious thing than just my work, without an increase in the expenses and you would have more satisfaction. Later on, if maybe one day you are on your own with the impressionist paintings you will only have to continue and to enlarge on those which actually exists. Finally Gauguin says that Laval found someone who will give him 150 francs per month for at least one year, and that Laval also would maybe come in February. And I have written to Bernard that I think that in the Midi he could not live for less than 3.50 or 4 francs per day just for lodging & food. He says that he believes that for 200 francs per month...

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