I'd like you to spend some time here, you'd feel it — after some time your vision changes, you see with a more Japanese eye, you feel colour differently. I'm also convinced that it's precisely through a long stay here that I'll bring out my personality. The Japanese [like a. o. Hokusai, admired by Vincent] draws quickly, very quickly, like a flash of lightning, because his nerves are finer, his feeling simpler. I've been here [Arles] only a few months but — tell me, in Paris would I have drawn in an hour the drawing of the boats?.. .Now this [sketch] was done without measuring, letting the pen go. So I tell myself that gradually the expenses will be balanced by work.
Dutch painter (1853–1890)
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. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, eventually leading to his suicide at age thirty-seven.
Bio from: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Alternative Names:
Vincent Willem van Gogh
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van Gogh
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Vincent Van Gogh
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Van Gogh
From Wikidata (CC0)
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There is a great difference between one idler and another idler. There is someone who is an idler out of laziness and lack of character, owing to the baseness of his nature. If you like, you may take me for one of those. Then there is the other kind of idler, the idler despite himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action who does nothing because his hands are tied, because he is, so to speak, imprisoned somewhere, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because disastrous circumstances have brought him forcibly to this end. Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service? There is something inside me, but what can it be? He is quite another idler. If you like you may take me for one of those.
…I have a feeling of being at home when I am with Sien, a feeling that she gives me my own hearth, that our lives are interwoven. This is a heartfelt, deep feeling, serious, and not without a dark shadow of her gloomy past and mine, as if some evil threatened us, against which we should have to struggle all our lives. At the same time, I feel a great calm and brightness and cheerfulness at the thought of her, and the straight path that is lying before me.
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Dutch original text of his letter (citaat uit Van Gogh's brief, in het origineel Nederlands): Ziehier een lijstje van hollandsche schilderijen voor den [Parijse] Salon bestemd:
- Israels, een oud man: ..een oud man zit in een hutje bij een haard.. waarin een klein brokje turf nog even gloeit in de schemering. Want het is een donker hutje waar dat oud mannetje in zit, een oud hutje met een klein raampje met een wit gordijntje.– Zijn hond die met hem oud is geworden zit naast hem – die twee oudjes kijken elkaar aan, zij kijken elkaar in de oogen, die hond en dat mannetje. En intusschen haalt het mannetje zijn tabaksdoos uit zijn broekzak en hij stopt een pijpje zoo in de schemering. Anders niets – die schemering, die stilte, die eenzaamheid van die twee oudjes, mannetje en hond, dat elkaar kennen van die twee, dat nadenken van dien ouden man.. ..dat gelaat – een expressie weemoedig, tevreden, onderworpen.. .Ik weet bepaald geen ander schilderij dan deze Israels die het bij 'De Dood en de Houthakker' van Millet kan uithouden, dat men er te gelijk mee kan zien, ik weet van den anderen kant geen ander schilderij dat het naast deze Israels zou uithouden dan De Dood en de Houthakker van Millet, geen ander schilderij dat men te gelijk met deze Israels zien kan. Verder gevoel ik in mijn verbeelding een onweerstaanbaar streven om dat schij [schilderij] van Israels & dat andere van Millet tot elkaar te brengen en elkaar te doen completeeren.. .Het is een fameuse Israels,.
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