| | 27 letters relate to business - sales... | Excerpt length: shorter longer | |
| Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Anthon van Rappard
(August 1884)
... Wagon.” And now I am working
on them. But on condition that I paint the six canvases for
myself but that I bear his dining room in mind, for
instance with regard to their size; he will pay the expenses of
models and paint, whereas the canvases remain my property, and
will be returned to me after he has copied them. This enables
me to do things that would get too expensive if I had to pay
for everything. And it's a job I enjoy doing and which I'm
working hard at. But on the other hand I must exert myself
quite a bit to explain things to him while he is doing the
copying. I have already finished painted sketches in the
ultimate size of about five by two feet of the
“Plougher” [F 1142, JH 512] and the
“Sower” [F 1143, JH 509] and the
“Shepherd.” [F 0042, JH 517]. I have smaller ones
of the “Wheat Harvest” [JH 508] and the “Ox
Wagon in Winter.” [F 1144, JH 511]. So I suppose you can
imagine that I am not exactly... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(2nd half September 1884)
... that for myself. Goodbye,
Vincent
It was mere chance that recently I happened to be asked to
do a drawing or a painted study for 20 guilders. I acceded to
this request, but seeing that I suspected (a suspicion which,
on investigation, proved to be well founded) that Margot
Begemann was behind it all, and that indirectly she wanted to
make me a present of the money, I most resolutely refused to
accept payment, but not to do the drawing, which
I sent. It is no easy matter, when one is sorely pressed for
money, to refuse it. But it would have been a pons asinorum,
and underhand expedient - so - instead of such underhand
expedients - is there nothing better to do? I am convinced of
it. For your sake as well as mine, and for the sake of many
others, I wish that we had Mourets in the art trade, who
would know how to create a new and larger buying
public.
Perhaps you will say: Isn't Tersteeg, for instance, a
Mouret? Maybe he is after all.... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(October 1884)
... That's what I think.
You must not imagine that I have earned anything by doing
that work for Hermans; the first day I got two bills for the
stretchers, canvases and a number of tubes, amounting to
more than I had received from him to pay for them. I
told him that I did not want these bills to remain unpaid, and
asked him if he wanted to have them put in his name or if he
would pay me something in advance. Oh no, he said, let it
wait, they need not be paid at once.
I said, Yes, they must be paid at once. Then he gave
me 25 guilders.
Then came all my other expenses for models, not counting my
time, work, etc.; but since then I have not seen any of his
money, nor have I asked for it. On the contrary, because
my work pleased him from first to last, I consider myself
already sufficiently paid, if need be. Besides, the pictures
remain my property, and I must judge for myself what I am
willing to lay out for them. But enough of this, since... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(3 August 1885)
... my spending a single
guilder except on bread. Last year I had an ugly setback in the
matter of the decoration of a dining room, which I did for
somebody who would not pay me. If you take into consideration
that notwithstanding all my exertions I have not yet recovered
from the deficit thus occasioned - the colours I got from you
and Leurs last year were destined for that purpose - you will
understand that the year was not lucrative for me. I have no
friends - and yet I tell you, do not despair of getting your
money!
But could you manage to show some of my work at The Hague?
That would be the best thing, and in this way you would serve
your own interests as well as mine. I don't ask high prices,
and the amount in question is not big. And therefore I suggest
you try it. I haven't any money, less than ever before, as this
is a period in which I am making myself independent of all
subsidies. 2
Mr. Furnée was the father of the land surveyor to
... | Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh
(c. 9 July 1888)
... sing at least as loud
as a frog.
I have again been thinking that when you remember that I
painted the portrait of père Tanguy , and that he also had the
portrait of mother Tanguy (which they sold), and of their
friend (it is true that for this latter portrait I was paid 20
francs by him), and that I have bought without discount 250
francs worth of paints from Tanguy, on which naturally he made
something, and finally that I have been his friend no less than
he has been mine, I have very serious reason to doubt his right
to claim money from me; and it really is squared by the study
he still has of mine, all the more so because there was an
express arrangement that he should pay himself by the sale of a
picture.
Xanthippe, Mother Tanguy, and some other ladies have by
some queer freak of Nature heads of silex or flint. Certainly
these ladies are a good deal more dangerous in civilized
society they circulate in than the poor citizens bitten by mad dogs
who live in... |
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