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 differen… - Vincent van Gogh

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Engraved portrait of Vincent van Gogh, facing left

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.

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About Vincent van Gogh

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.

Biography information from Wikiquote · Portrait adapted from Wikimedia Commons, Vincent van Gogh (CC BY-SA)

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Vincent Willem van Gogh van Gogh Vincent Van Gogh Van Gogh

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To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours, their blending and their contrast, the mysterious vibrations of related tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone's passion by the radiance of the setting sun. That's certainly no realistic trompe l'oeil, but something that really exists, isn't it?

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