Vincent Van Gogh: Working

Vincent Van Gogh was Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890). Explore interesting quotes on working.

Vincent Van Gogh: 476 quotes472 likes

“What surprising fellows those French painters are. A Millet, Delacroix, Corot, Troyon, Daubigny, Rousseau, and a Daumier.... Something else about Delacroix - he had a discussion with a friend about the question of working absolutely from nature, and said on that occasion that one should take one's 'studies' from nature - but that the 'actual painting' had to be made 'by heart'. This friend was walking along the boulevard when they had this discussion - which was already fairly heated. When they parted the other man was still not entirely persuaded. After they parted, Delacroix let him stroll on for a bit - then (making a trumpet of his two hands) bellowed after him in the middle of the street - to the consternation of the worthy passers-by:
'By heart! By heart!”

Vincent Van Gogh

(Par coeur! Par coeur!) I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading this article and some other things about Delacroix.. In his letter to Anthon van Rappard, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, 8 and c. 15 August 1885 - original manuscript, letter 526, at Van Gogh Museum, location Amsterdam - inv. nos. b8390 V/2006, http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let526/letter.html See for this anecdote, taken from Charles Blanc, Les artistes de mon temps, letter 496, n. 7. 1880s, 1885

“.. Now there is in the South of Belgium, in Hainault, in the neighborhood of Mons.... a district called the Borinage, that has a peculiar population of laborers who work in the numerous coal mines... I should very much like to go there as an evangelist.... St. Paul was three years in Arabia before he began to preach..”

Vincent Van Gogh

In his letter to brother Theo, from Laeken, near Brussels, 15 Nov. 1878, (letter 126); as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 18 1870s

“.. I went to live in my studio on the first of May [? ]... I have not had a hot dinner more than perhaps six or seven times since. I have lived then and I do so here, not having money for dinner, because the work costs me too much and I have trusted too much on my being strong enough to hold out. Now I have made it worse by smoking a great deal, which I do the more because then one does not feel an empty stomach so much... My opinion is that one must not think that the people whose health is damaged, quite or partly, are no good for painting... It fell so unexpectedly on me, I had been feeling weak and feverish, but I went on notwithstanding, but I began to feel worried when more and more teeth broke off, and I began to look more and more ill.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in his letter to brother Theo from Antwerp, Belgium, Febr. 1886; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 449), p 24 1880s, 1886

“Believe me, I work, I drudge, I grind all day long and I do so with pleasure, but I should get very much discouraged if I could not go on working as hard or even harder... I feel, Theo, that there is a power within me, and I do what I can to bring it out and free it. It is hard enough, all the worry and bother with my drawings, and if I had too many other cares and could not pay the models I should lose my head.”

Vincent Van Gogh

quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands in Jan. 1882; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 20 (letter 171) 1880s, 1882

“It is hard, terribly hard, to keep on working when one does not sell, and one literally has to pay for one's colors from what would not be too much for eating, drinking and lodgings, calculated ever so strictly. And then, besides, the models... All the same they are building State museums, and the like, for hundreds of thousands, but meanwhile, the artists can go to the dogs.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in his letter, from Antwerp, Belgium, Dec. 1885; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 438) p. 35 1880s, 1885

“I have [drawings of] about twelve figures of diggers and men who are working in a potato field, and I wonder if I could not make something of it, you have still a few, for instance, a man who fills a bag with potatoes. Well, I do not know for sure, but sooner or later I shall accomplish that, for I looked at it so attentively this summer, and here in the dunes I could make a good study of the earth and the sky, and then boldly put in the figures.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in letter 169, from The Hague, January, 1882; as cited in Vincent van Gogh, Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, catalog-page: Dutch Period: - 4. Potato Diggers 1880s, 1882

“I was certainly going the right way for a stroke when I left Paris. I paid for it nicely afterwards! When I stopped drinking, when I stopped smoking so much, when I began again to think instead of trying not to think - good Lord, the depression and the prostration of it! Work in these magnificent natural surroundings [of Arles ] has helped my morale.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, 4 May 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 481), p 24 1880s, 1888

“Of course I should be very happy to sell a drawing but I am happier still when a real artist like Weissenbruch says about an unsalable??? study or drawing: "That is true to nature, I could work from that myself."”

Vincent Van Gogh

quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands in Febr. 1882; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 20 (letter 177) 1880s, 1882

“As I feel a need to speak out frankly, I cannot hide from you that I am overcome by a feeling of great care, depression, a "je ne sais quoi" of discouragement and despair more than I can tell.
I take it so much to heart that I do not get on better with people in general; it quite worries me because on it depends so much my success in carrying out my work.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Drenthe, The Netherlands, Autumn 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 328) p. 21 1880s, 1883

“I'd like you [Theo] 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.”

Vincent Van Gogh

In a letter to brother Theo, from Arles, c. 5 June 1888, in 'Van Gogh's Letters', letter 620 http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let620/letter.html, Van Goghmuseum The Japanese artists with their colored woodblock-prints meant a great inspirations for several Paris' artists - they were extremely important for Vincent, these years 1880s, 1888

“This art that we are all working in, we feel it has a long future before it, and one must have some settled base, like steady people, and not like decadents. Here my life will become more and more like a Japanese painter's, living close to nature like a petty tradesman.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, Autumn 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 540), pp. 22-23 1880s, 1888

“Certainly after all you are right, damn well right - even making allowance for hope, the thing is to accept the probably disastrous reality. I am hoping to throw myself once again wholly in my work which has got behind hand.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, 29 March 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 582), p 25 1880s, 1889

“And my intention is to try to form a collection of many such things, which would not be quite unworthy of the title 'heads of the people.' By working hard, boy, I hope to succeed in making something good. It isn't there yet, but I aim at it, and struggle for it. I want something serious, - some thing fresh - something with soul in it! Forward - forward”

Vincent Van Gogh

quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands, 3 Jan. 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 257), pp. 20-21 1880s, 1883

“If I should find something it will probably be a position between clergy man and missionary in the suburbs of London among the working people. Do not speak to anybody about it yet.”

Vincent Van Gogh

In his letter to brother Theo from Welwyn, England, 17 June 1876; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 17 (letter 69) as school teacher and lay preacher near London 1870s

“I fear that in a few years there may be a kind of 'panic', in this form: 'since Millet' we have sunk very low — the word decadence, now whispered or pronounced in veiled terms (see Herkomer), will then sound like an alarm bell. Many, like I myself, now keep quiet, because they already have the reputation of being awkward customers,5 and talking about it doesn't help. That — namely, talking — isn't what one needs to do — one must work, though with sorrow in the heart. Those who later cry out the loudest about decadence will themselves belong to it the most. I repeat: by this shall ye know them, [from: Matt. 7:16. ] by their work, and it won't be the most eloquent who say the truest things. See Millet himself, see Herkomer, they're certainly not orators, and speak almost reluctantly.”

Vincent Van Gogh

In his letter to Theo, from The Hague, 5 Nov. 1882 - original manuscript of letter no. 280 - at Van Gogh Museum, location Amsterdam - inv. b263 a-b V/1962, http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let280/letter.html 1880s, 1882

“It seems to me almost impossible to work in Paris [he just left Paris] unless one has some place of retreat where one can revive oneself and get back one's tranquility and poise. Without that one would get hopelessly brutalized.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in a letter of Vincent tot brother Theo, from Arles, 21 Febr. 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 463), p. 28 1880s, 1888

“After the crisis which I went through coming down here I can make no plans nor anything, I am decidedly better now, but hope, the desire to succeed is gone, and I work because I must, so as not to suffer too much mentally, so as to distract my mind.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, Summer 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 518) p. 22 1880s, 1888

“My dear Brother, - I am working like one actually possessed, more than ever I am in a dumb fury of work… Perhaps something will happen to me like what Eug. Delacroix spoke of, "I discovered painting when I had no longer teeth or breath." What I dream of in my best moments is not so much of striking color effects as once more the half tones.”

Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Sept. 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, p. 33 (letter 604) 1880s, 1889

“I am not working for myself alone, I believe in the absolute necessity for a new art of color, of design, and - of the artistic life..”

Vincent Van Gogh

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, Spring 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 469) p. 22 1880s, 1888

“Often I think of that excellent painter Monticelli,... when I come back myself from the mental labor of balancing the six essential colors.... sheer work and calculation, with one's mind utterly on the stretch, like an actor on the stage in a difficult part, with a hundred things at once to think of in a single half-hour.
Don't think that I would artificially keep up a feverish condition, but do understand that I am in the midst of a complicated calculation which results in quick succession in canvases quickly executed, but calculated long beforehand. So now, when anyone says that such and such is done too quickly, you can reply that they have looked at it too quickly.”

Vincent Van Gogh