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"Journeying through these parts for hour after hour, one feels that there really is nothing but that infinite earth, that mould of corn or heather, that infinite sky."
Vincent van Gogh |
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Letter |
Keywords |
Excerpt / Full Text |
Link to Painting(s) Mentioned in Letter |
| 323
11 and 12 September 1883 | --- | Of course the woman and her children were with me to the last, and when I left, the parting was not very easy. | --- |
| 324
c. 15 September 1883 | Dupré, Mesdag, Neuhuys, Millet, Th. Rousseau | How much sadness there is in life. Still, it won't do to become depressed, one should turn to other things, and the right thing is work, but there are times when one can only find peace of mind in the realization: I too, shall not be spared by unhappiness. | --- |
| 325
c. 17 September 1883 | Dupré, Millet, C.M., Liebermann, Henkes, Herkomer, Jules Breton, De Groux | Then the heath is sometimes far from attractive at that hot midday hour – it is aggravating, monotonous, and wearying like the desert, as inhospitable and hostile, so to speak. Painting it in that blazing light and rendering the planes vanishing into infinity makes one dizzy. | --- |
| 326
c. 22 September 1883 | Rappard, C.M., Proudhon, Gavarni, Lady Macbeth, Delacroix, Corot, Béranger, Hugo, Father | At first I had some bad luck with my models on the heath; they laughed at me, and made fun of me . . . . | --- |
| 327
Hoogeveen | Wisselingh | I have seen superb figures, but I repeat, a scenery that has so much nobility, so much dignity and gravity, must be treated after deep reflection and with patience and steady work. | --- |
| 328
c. 26 September 1883 | Rappard | What can I do? Will it get better or worse in time? I do not know, but I cannot shake off a feeling of deep melancholy. | --- |
| 329
c. 27 September 1883 | Borinage, Meissonier | Full Text | --- |
| 330
New Amsterdam | Michel, Th. Rousseau, Van Goyen, Ph. de Koninck, Daubigny, Boetzel Albums, Liebermann | Full Text | Farmhouses: F 17, JH 395 |
| 331
New Amsterdam | Van Goyen, Ruysdael, Jules Dupré | I think I have found my little kingdom, you know.
I must repeat once more that I hope you feel perfectly sure, in hours of melancholy, that you are not without a friend. | Two Peasant Women in the Peat Field: F 19, JH 409; Landscape with Bog-Oak Trunks: F 1095, JH 406 |
| 332
12 October 1883 | Thijs Maris, Boughton, Rappard, Liebermann, Michel, Jules Dupré, Carlyle, Millet | My dear boy, you know how things are with me, but if you are feeling miserable about one thing and another, don't feel alone. It is too much to bear alone, and in part, at least, I can sympathize with you. | --- |
| 333
13 October 1883 | Goupil, Obach, Tersteeg, Millet | You are preoccupied with other things, exactly. All at once you feel, damn it, am I dreaming? I am on the wrong road – where is my studio, where is my brush?
Though I wish it were not so, I am extremely sensitive about what is said of my work, about what impression I make personally. When I meet with distrust, when I am alone, I feel a certain void which cripples my initiative. | Plowman and Three Women: F 1096r, JH 411 |
| 335
c. 22 October 1883 | Uncle Vincent, Wisselingh, Millet, Corot, C.M. | . . . it seems to me that the whole art business is rotten – to tell you the truth, I doubt if the present enormous prices, even for masterpieces, will last. | Peasant Burning Weeds: F 20, JH 417; Peat Boat with Two Figures: F 21, JH 415; Farmhouse at Night: F 1097, JH 418 |
| 336
28 October 1883 | Barbizon, Zola, Van Eyck, Rappard, Gustave Dore, Millet, Israëls, Breton, Boughton, Herkomer | As for me, if I could find some people whom I could talk to about art, who felt for it and wanted to feel for it – I should gain an enormous advantage in my work – I should feel more myself, be more myself. | --- |
| 337
c. 29 October-2 November 1883 | --- | Well, my dear fellow, to me painting is too logical, too reasonable, too straightforward to allow me personally ever to change my course. | --- |
| 338
19 November 1883 | Cromwell, Mayflower, Pilgrims, Jacob and Esau, Puritans, Carlyle | It might well be that you are fighting hard and futilely against your character, frustrating your own liberation just because you doubt whether you can do it. | --- |
| 339
c. 29 October-15 November 1883 | Van Eyck, Adriaan & Isaäc Ostade, Jules and Émile Breton, Corot, Michel, Wisselingh, Goupil | I cannot repeat to you often enough, boy, that when one is thirty, one is just beginning. Look at the biographies of artists, even many who had painted from their earliest years changed only then, found their own personality only then. | Farmhouse with Peat Stacks: F 22, JH 421 |
| 339a
c. 29 October-2 November 1883 | Tersteeg, Father, Dupré, Daubigny, Corot, Millet, Israëls, Herkomer, Michelet, Hugo, Zola, Balzac | I feel my own incurable melancholy, caused by certain developments in the past . . . . | --- |
| 339b
c. 3 November 1883 | --- | You and I are brothers, and what is more, friends, and if misfortune should happen to tighten these ties and knit us closer together . . . . | --- |
| 340
c. 16 November 1883 | Liebermann, Termeulen, Jules Bakhuyzen, Corot, Millet | Journeying through these parts for hour after hour, one feels that there really is nothing but that infinite earth, that mould of corn or heather, that infinite sky. | Shepherd with Flock near a Little Church at Zweeloo: F 877, JH 423 |
| 341
c. 17 November 1883 | Uncle Vincent, Tersteeg, Wisselingh | So my plan is always to risk too much rather than too little; if one is defeated by too much, well, so be it. | --- |
| 342
26 November 1883 | Lady Macbeth, Furnée | . . . so as for me, I resign myself to fate, and act as if nothing were the matter. | Drawbridge in Nieuw-Amsterdam: F 1098, JH 425 |
| 343
1 December 1883 | Serret, Rappard | Indeed, this may be a small misery, but it is a sorrow after all: A feeling of being an outcast – particularly strange and unpleasant – though the country may be ever so stimulating and beautiful. | --- |
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