Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Wilhelmina van Gogh (c. 22 June 1888) ... growing among the herbs with healing
powers. Nevertheless, I am in the habit of taking large
quantities of bad coffee in such cases, not because it is very
good for my already damaged collection of teeth, but because my
strong imaginative powers enable me to have a devout faith -
worthy of an idolater or a Christian or a cannibal - in the
exhilarating influence of said fluid. Fortunately for my fellow
creatures I have until today refrained from recommending this
and similar remedies as efficacious.
The sun in these parts, that is something different,
and also if over a period of time one drinks wine, which - at
least partly - is pressed from real grapes. I assure you that
in our native country people are as blind as bats and
criminally stupid because they do not exert themselves to go
more to the Indies or somewhere else where the sun shines. It
is not right to know only one thing - one gets stultified by
that; one should not rest before one knows the opposite
...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (29 June 1888) ... The difficulty is eating at home alone. The
restaurants here are expensive because everybody eats at
home.
Certainly the Picards and the Leonardo da Vinci too are not
less beautiful because they are few, and on the other hand the
Montcellis, the Daumiers, the Corots, the Daubignys and the
Millets are not ugly because in so many cases they have been
painted with very great rapidity and because there are
relatively a good many of them. As for landscapes, I begin to
find that some done more rapidly than ever are the best of what
I do. For instance, the one I sent you the cartoon of, the
harvest , and the stacks too.
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (11 August 1888) ... and by way of being
eternal.
Fortunately my digestion is so nearly all right
again that I have lived for three weeks in the month on ship's biscuits with
milk and eggs. It is the blessed warmth that is bringing back
my strength, and I was certainly right in going at once
to the South, instead of waiting until the evil was past
remedy. Yes, really,
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Mr. and Mrs. Ginoux (30 or 31 December 1889) ... friends - my friends for a
long time.
I have forgotten to thank you for the olives you sent me
some time ago, they were excellent; I shall bring back the
boxes in a little while…
So I write you this letter, my dear friends, in order to try
and distract our dear patient for a moment, so that she may
once again show us her habitual smile and give pleasure to all
who know her. As I told you, within a fortnight I hope to visit
you, wholly recovered.
Diseases exist to remind us that we are not made of wood,
and it seems to me this is the bright side of it all.
And after that one dreams of taking up one's daily work
again, being less afraid of obstacles, with a new stock of
serenity; and even at parting one will tell oneself, “And
when you are friends, you are friends for a long time” -
for this is the way to leave each other.
Well, we shall be seeing each other soon, and my best wishes
for Mrs. Ginoux's swift recovery.
Believe...
Newspaper article by Anton Kerssemakers (14 April 1912) ... square sheep low down along the mill.
In those days he was starving like a true Bohemian, and more
than once it happened that he did not see meat (for the purpose
of eating) for six weeks on end, always just dry bread with a
chunk of cheese. It won't go bad on the road, he would say. The
following story may serve as proof that he was quite
accustomed to this and would not have it otherwise. Once in
Nuenen, when we were about to set out on a ramble - it was in
the afternoon at the height of summer - I said, “To begin
with we'll have a pot of coffee made in that inn over there,
and eat a lot of bread and butter with trimmings, then we shall
be able to keep going until late this evening.”
No sooner said than done, for he invariably consented to
whatever you proposed.
The table was well furnished with various kinds of bread,
cheese, sliced ham and so on.
When I looked, I saw he was eating dry bread and cheese, and
I said, “Come on, Vincent, do take...
