#letters – @hello-artistspeaking on Tumblr

Letter from Édouard Manet to Mme Jules Guillemet, 1880

Translation: Bellevue, Thursday [July-August 1880] To Mme Jules Guillemet Nonsense if you will, dear Madame, but such sweet nonsense [sketches of her shoes and skirts] which enables me to spend my time very pleasantly. I’m getting better and better, and a letter from you now and then would help my cure along - so don’t be too economical with them.

I haven’t seen Mlle L. [Lemonnier], her mother is very ill and she is moving. Still, I’m surprised to have had no news from her. I hope you won’t find my letters a bore, you’ll tell me, won’t you, and send me your news soon E. Manet

#edouard manet #artist #artist quote #letters #epistolary

hello-artistspeaking

Where’s the natural in a painting? Everything in paintings since the most distant ages has been completely conventional, deliberate throughout and very far from the natural, consequently very mannered. You’ll say that they, the ancient masters, have genius. That’s true, and we don’t have it, but that’s no reason not to proceed like them. To a Japanese person what we do is mannered and vice versa; this comes from the fact that there’s a notable distance between the two in vision, customs and types. So if a man sees, feels, thinks differently from the mass because of race, temperament or other cause, he is unnatural and consequently mannered.

Paul Gauguin

Letter to Vincent van Gogh, 13 December 1889

#paul gauguin #vincent van gogh #artist #letters #correspondence #natural #convention #genius #art philosophy #today in art history

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archivesofamericanart

In a series of letters to pen pal and art collector Elizabeth Stein, sculptor Beatrice Wood (1893–1998) often shared daily anecdotes of her cats’ antics, observing that cats “are of course just human beings with four legs instead of just two.” During this time, Stein was in her nineties and Wood was more than one hundred years old. Through their correspondence, both women relished the daily pleasures of life.

This letter is currently on view in our exhibit ‘Before Internet Cats’ http://s.si.edu/2o7sJWN

#beatrice wood #artist #artist quote #sculptor #cats #letters #correspondence

hello-artistspeaking

Every day in London there is beautiful, absinthe-coloured weather. Is that enough to lure you here?

John Singer Sargent to Claude Monet, December 1894

#john singer sargent #claude monet #correspondence #letters #artist #artist quote #london #weather

hello-artistspeaking

www.wikiart.org

"At the moment I’m doing a no. 50 canvas, of women gathering wrack at the sea’s edge. They’re like boxes stacked up here and there, blue clothing and black coifs and this despite the bitterness of the cold. Manure which they gather to fertilize their land, red-brown ochre with ruddy highlights. Pink sands, not yellow, because of the damp probably – dark sea. Seeing this every day I get a kind of gust of wind for life, of sadness and obedience to unfortunate laws. I try to put this gust of wind on canvas, not haphazardly but rationally, perhaps exaggerating a certain rigidity of pose, certain sombre colours etc…"

– Paul Gauguin to Vincent van Gogh, 13 December 1889

#paul gauguin #vincent van gogh #artist #letters #correspondence #kelp #the kelp gatherers #painting #brittany #bretagne #today in art history #about a work

hello-artistspeaking

One night I went for a walk by the sea along the empty shore. It was not gay, but neither was it sad – it was – beautiful. The deep blue sky was flecked with clouds of a blue deeper than the fundamental blue of intense cobalt, and others of a clearer blue, like the whiteness of the Milky Way. In the blue depth the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, pink, more brilliant, more sparklingly gemlike than at home – even in Paris: opals you might call them, emeralds, lapis lazuli, rubies, sapphires.

Vincent van Gogh

letter to Theo van Gogh, c. 2 June 1888, from Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer

#vincent van gogh #theo van gogh #letters #correspondence #the sea #walk #beauty #artist quote #today in art history

hello-artistspeaking

My word, these anxieties… who can live in modern life without catching his share of them?

Vincent van Gogh

letter to Paul Signac, 10 April 1889

Source: vangoghletters.org

#vincent van gogh #paul signac #correspondence #letters #anxieties #life #modern life

hello-artistspeaking

As to doubting oneself, whether one is an artist or not – that entire question is too much of an abstraction. I say that I have nothing against thinking about it, though, provided I may also draw and paint.

Vincent van Gogh

Letter to Theo van Gogh, 11 November 1883

#vincent van gogh #theo van gogh #artist #art philosophy #artist quote #correspondence #letters #today in art history

hello-artistspeaking

I may occasionally long for one friend or another to come to the studio to look at something, which very rarely happens, but I’ve never felt a desire (and I don’t believe I ever shall) to bring the public to my work. I’m not indifferent as regards appreciation of my work — but that too should be quiet, and a certain popularity seems to me the least desirable of things.

Vincent Van Gogh

Letter to Anthon van Rappard. The Hague, on or about Sunday, 29 October 1882

Source: vangoghletters.org

#vincent van gogh #artist #artist quote #letters #correspondence #art #art philosophy #exhibition #today in art history

hello-artistspeaking

For a long time now I have thought it touching that the Japanese artists used to exchange works among themselves very often. It certainly proves that they liked and upheld each other and that there reigned a certain harmony among them; and that they were living in some sort of fraternal community, quite naturally and not in intrigues. The more we are like them in this respect, the better it will be for us.

Vincent van Gogh

Letter B18, to Emile Bernard

#vincent van gogh #artist quote #letters #emile bernard #artist exchange #japan #harmony