For me the English draughtsmen are what Dickens is in the sphere of literature. It’s one and the same sentiment, noble and healthy, and something one always comes back to.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Anthon van Rappard 19 September 1882
Contact with artists has, so to speak, completely ceased for me…I’m made out to be everything peculiar and bad. This means that I sometimes have a certain sense of being abandoned, but on the other hand it concentrates my attention on the things that aren’t changeable, namely the eternal beauty of nature.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Anthon van Rappard 19 September 1882
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
Always continue walking a lot and loving nature, for that’s the real way to learn to understand art better and better.
Vincent van Gogh
letter to Theo van Gogh, January 1874
Source: vangoghletters.org
What artist hasn’t struggled and toiled, and what other way is there than struggling and toiling to find firm ground beneath one’s feet?
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh 19 November 1881
Source: vangoghletters.org
There are two things about the autumn that particularly attract me. Sometimes there’s a gentle melancholy in the falling leaves, in the tempered light, in the haziness of things, in the elegance of the slender trunks. Then, I like the more robust, rougher side just as much — the strong light effects, for example on a digger sweating in the midday sun.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh 9 September 1882
Source: vangoghletters.org
The feeling for and love of nature always strike a chord sooner or later with people who take an interest in art. The duty of the painter is to study nature in depth and to use all his intelligence, to put his feelings into his work so that it becomes comprehensible to others.
Vincent van Gogh
letter to Theo van Gogh, 31 July 1882
Source: vangoghletters.org
I want to reach the point where people say of my work, that man feels deeply and that man feels subtly.
Vincent van Gogh
letter to Theo van Gogh, 21 July 1882
Source: vangoghletters.org
Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful.
Vincent van Gogh
letter to Theo van Gogh, January 1874
Source: vangoghletters.org
Love what we love, what an unnecessary warning that seems, and yet how great a raison d’être. After all, how many people expend their best efforts on something that isn’t worthy of their best efforts, and treat what they love in a ‘stepmotherly’ fashion instead of giving themselves openly to the irresistible urging of their heart.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Anthon van Rappard 21 November 1881
Source: vangoghletters.org
Even if I fall down 99 times, the hundredth time, too, I’ll get up!
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh 19 November 1881
Source: vangoghletters.org
For in matters of love one mustn’t only take but also give, and conversely, not only give but also take.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh 12 November 1881
Source: vangoghletters.org
Yes, the Italians are most definitely clever, but where is their sentiment, their human feeling? I’d rather see a grey scratch by Lançon — a few rag-pickers eating their soup while it’s snowing and raining outside — than the dazzling peacock’s feathers of the Italians, who seem to multiply daily, while the more sober artists are no less rare than they always were.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Anthon van Rappard 19 September 1882
The sea isn’t always picturesque either, but one has to look at those moments and effects as well if one doesn’t want to deceive oneself as to its true character.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh 16 September 1883
Source: vangoghletters.org
How much sadness there is in life. Well, one may not become melancholy, one must look elsewhere, and to work is the right thing, only there are moments when one only finds peace in the realization: misfortune won’t spare me either.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh 14 September 1883
Source: vangoghletters.org
How much is involved before one can express something — but in that very difficulty lies a stimulus.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh 9 September 1882
Source: vangoghletters.org
While making it I said to myself: let me not leave before there’s something of an autumn evening in it, something mysterious, something with seriousness in it.
However, because this effect doesn’t last, I had to paint quickly. The figures were done with a few vigorous strokes with a firm brush — in one go. I was struck by how firmly the slender trunks stood in the ground — I began them using a brush, but because of the ground, which was already impasted, one brushstroke simply disappeared. Then I squeezed roots and trunks into it from the tube, and modelled them a little with the brush. Yes, now they stand in it — shoot up out of it — stand firmly rooted in it. In a sense I’m glad that I’ve never learned how to paint. Probably then I would have learned to ignore effects like this.
Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo van Gogh 3 September 1882
Source: vangoghletters.org