Van Gogh Wrote 800 Letters. Here Are 30 Lines From Them.
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) worked as an art dealer, a teacher, a bookshop clerk and a lay preacher among Belgian coal miners before deciding at twenty-seven to become a painter. He had no formal training worth the name and about a decade of working life. In that decade he made roughly 2,100 works, including some 860 oil paintings, most of them in his last two years. He was supported almost entirely by his younger brother Theo, an art dealer, and he wrote to him constantly. He died at thirty-seven of a gunshot wound; Theo died six months later.
Photo: Vincent van Gogh — Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Van Gogh is quoted as a symbol of the inarticulate genius, which is exactly backwards. He left more than 800 letters, and they are among the best writing any painter has produced about painting. Most went to his brother Theo, who paid for the canvas and the paint and the rent. The full annotated edition is free online, which means every line below can be checked against a scan of the original page.
On starting when you cannot do it yet
If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint', then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. — to Theo, 1884
I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it. — to Theo
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. — to Theo, 1882
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? — to Theo
One must work and dare if one really wants to live. — to Theo
On looking, which he treated as the actual work
It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding. — to Theo
I often think that the night is more alive and more richly coloured than the day. — to Theo, 1888
For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. — to Theo, 1888
Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it. — to Theo
Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model. — to Theo
How difficult it is to be simple. — to Theo
On people
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. — to Theo
Love many things, for therein lies the true strength. — to Theo
What is done in love is done well. — to Theo
Let us not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives. — to Theo
The heart of man is very much like the sea: it has its storms, it has its tides, and in its depths it has its pearls too. — to Theo
Conscience is a man's compass. — to Theo
On being unable to sell anything
I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart. — to Theo
I want to touch people with my art. I want them to say: he feels deeply, he feels tenderly. — to Theo
It is better to be high-spirited even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. — to Theo
If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. — to Theo
There is peace even in the storm. — to Theo
Art is to console those who are broken by life. — to Theo
From the last two years
I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process. — to Theo, 1889
I am risking my life for my work, and half my reason has gone. — to Theo, 1890
I wish they would only take me as I am. — to Theo
The sadness will last forever. — reported by Theo as among his last words, 1890
As for me, I am rather often uneasy in my mind, because I think that my life has not been calm enough. — to Theo
Someday death will take us to another star. — to Theo
I should like to paint portraits which appear after a century to the people living then as apparitions. — to Willemien van Gogh, 1890
The letters also make one thing plain that the legend obscures. Van Gogh knew exactly what he was doing technically. He writes about complementary colours, about Japanese prints, about the price of zinc white, about why a particular green will not sit next to a particular red. The wildness is in the pictures. The correspondence is the work of a careful, self-critical professional who could not persuade anyone to buy.
Four lines attributed to him that are not in the letters
- "I dream my painting and I paint my dream." The most reproduced Van Gogh quote on the internet. It does not appear anywhere in the correspondence and has no known source.
- "Normality is a paved road: it's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it." Circulated endlessly on posters. Not in any letter.
- "I would rather die of passion than of boredom." Usually credited to Van Gogh, occasionally to Émile Zola. Not found in either.
- "Great things are done by a series of small things brought together" is real, but it is routinely trimmed. His sentence begins by denying that great things are done by impulse, and the contrast is the point.
It is easy to check. The Van Gogh Museum's edition presents every letter in the original Dutch or French with an English translation, a scan of the manuscript, and notes on the works mentioned. If a quotation cannot be found there, it almost certainly was not written by him.
How many paintings did Van Gogh sell in his lifetime?
The documented record is very thin, with one confirmed sale of a painting, The Red Vineyard, and a small number of other transactions. He was beginning to attract serious critical notice in the months before he died.
Who was Theo van Gogh?
Vincent's younger brother, an art dealer in Paris, who supported him financially for a decade and received most of the surviving letters. He died six months after Vincent, and his widow Jo van Gogh-Bonger published the correspondence and built Vincent's reputation.
Where can I read the letters?
All of them are free at vangoghletters.org, in the original language with English translations, manuscript scans and scholarly notes.
Sources
Keep reading
Quotes & Sayings30 Nietzsche Quotes, and What "God Is Dead" Actually SaysThe most famous sentence in modern philosophy is usually read as a boast. In context it is spoken by a madman and it is a warning. Thirty quotes with the book and section number.
Quotes & SayingsDarwin's Most Quoted Sentence Is Not His: 30 That AreThe line about the species most adaptable to change was written by a business professor in 1963. Thirty quotes that really are Darwin's, from the books, the notebooks and the letters.
Quotes & Sayings30 Emily Dickinson Lines, With the Dashes Put BackDickinson published about ten poems in her lifetime and her editors removed her dashes, added titles and smoothed her rhymes. Thirty lines in the punctuation she actually used.
Quotes & SayingsEpictetus Never Wrote a Word: 30 Quotes From a Student's NotesEverything attributed to Epictetus was written down by a student sitting in his classroom. Thirty lines with the chapter they come from, and five modern inventions that circulate under his name.