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Vincent van Gogh Quotes
1853–1890 Netherlands
Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life.
Also known as: Gogh, Vincent Willem Van, Van Gogh, Van Gogh, Vincent, Vincent Van Gogh
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73 quotes
..The thought crossed my mind, how society today in its fall, at moments seen against the light of a renewal, stands out as a large, gloomy silhouette. Yes, for me, the drama of storm in nature, the drama of sorrow in life, is the most impressive.
The love between brothers is a strong support through life, that is an old truth, let us look for that support, may experience strengthen the bond between us, and let us be true and outspoken toward each other, let there he no secrets — as it is now.
I felt my energy revive, and said to myself, In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing. From that moment everything has seemed transformed for me.
More and more it seems to me that the pictures which must be painted to make present-day painting completely itself... are beyond the power of one isolated individual. They will therefore probably be created by groups of men combining together to execute an idea held in common.
A weaver who has to direct and to interweave a great many little threads has no time to philosophize about it, but rather he is so absorbed in his work that he doesn't think but acts, and he feels how things must go more than he can explain it.
Is all this illusion, imagination? I don't think so. And then one asks: My God! will it be for long, will it be for ever, will it be for eternity?
Letter to Theo (1880)
Certainly after all you are right, damn well right - even making allowance for hope, the thing is to accept the probably disastrous reality. I am hoping to throw myself once again wholly in my work which has got behind hand.
I hope I have just had simply an artist's freak, and then a lot of fever after very considerable loss of blood, as an artery was severed, but my appetite came back at once. My digestion is all right, and so from day to day serenity returns to my brain.
How will it be with my work a year hence? Well, Mauve [van Gogh's cousin and art-teacher, in The Hague] understands all this and he will give me as much technical advice as he can, - that which fills my head and my heart must be expressed in drawing or pictures.
The thing has already taken form in my mind before I start it. The first attempts are absolutely unbearable. I say this because I want you to know that if you see something worthwhile in what I am doing, it is not by accident but because of real direction and purpose.
When I call myself a peasant painter, that is a real fact, and it will become more and more clear to you in the future, I feel at home there. By witnessing peasant life continually at all hours of the day I have become so absorbed in it that I hardly ever think of anything else.
Oh, Theo, why should I change - I used to be very passive and very gentle and quiet — I'm that no longer, but then I'm no longer a child either now - sometimes I feel my own man.
Letter to Theo (1884)
Now, there are people who say to me "Why did you have anything to do with her," — that's one fact. And there are people who say to her, "Why did you have anything to do with him," — that's another fact.
Letter to Theo (1884)
Try to grasp the essence of what the great artists, the serious masters, say in their masterpieces, and you will again find God in them. One man has written or said it in a book, another in a painting.
Letter to Theo (1880)
My surroundings here [in the asylum St. Remy ] begin to weigh on me more than I can express - my word, I have had patience for more than a year - I need air, I feel overwhelmed with boredom and depression.
For myself I can only say at the moment that I think we all need rest - I feel done for. So much for me: I feel that this is the lot which I accept and which will not alter.. ..And the prospect grows darker, I see no happy future at all.
My intention is to make in Drenthe so much progress in painting that when I come back I may be qualified for the 'Society of Draughtsmen' [a group of London illustrators]. This stands again in connection with the second plan of going to England [to become an illustrator].
Here, under a stronger sun, I have found true what Pissarro said, and what Gauguin wrote to me as well, the simplicity, the lack of color, the gravity of great sunlight effects.
Now I as a painter shall never stand for anything of importance. I feel it utterly.. .I sometimes regret I did not simply keep to the Dutch palette [of Dutch impressionism ] with its grey tones, and have brushed away at landscapes of Montmartre [in 1886-87] with no ado.
This art that we are all working in, we feel it has a long future before it, and one must have some settled base, like steady people, and not like decadents. Here my life will become more and more like a Japanese painter's, living close to nature like a petty tradesman.
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