| | 26 letters relate to business - co-op... | Excerpt length: shorter longer | |
| 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... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(3 October 1888)
... make an exchange with the four of them.
He also says that Laval will come too, and that the other
two want to come. I should not ask anything better, but when it
is a question of several painters living a community life, I
stipulate at the outset that there must be an abbot to keep
order, and that would naturally be Gauguin. That is why I would
like Gauguin to be here first (besides Bernard and Laval will
only come in February - Bernard has to see his Military Board
of Appeal in Paris). As for me, I want two things, I want to
earn back the money which I have already spent, so as to give
it to you, and I want Gauguin to have peace and quiet in which
to produce, and to be able to breathe freely as an artist. If I
can get back the money already spent which you have been
lending me for several years, we shall enlarge our enterprise,
and try to found a studio for a renaissance and not for a
decadence. I am pretty sure that we can count on Gauguin
staying with us always, and that neither... |
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