Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. In just over a decade he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by symbolic colourisation and dramatic, impulsive and highly expressive paintwork. He sold only one painting during his lifetime and...
NationalityDutch
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth30 March 1853
CityZundert, Netherlands
Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.
It is the language of nature to which one has to listen.
What I need is courage, and this often fails me. And it is also a fact that since my disease, when I am in the fields I am overwhelmed by a feeling of loneliness to such a horrible extent that I shy away from going out. But this will change all the same as time goes on. Only when I stand a painting before my easel do I feel somewhat alive. Never mind, this is going to change too, for now my health is so good that I suppose the physical part of me will gain the victory.
Suffice it to say that black and white are also colors... for their simultaneous contrast is as striking as that of green and red, for instance.
If the storm within gets too loud, I take a glass too much to stun myself.
It is true that every day has its own evil, and its good too. But how difficult must life be, especially farther on when the evil of each day increases as far as worldly things go, if it is not strengthened and comforted by faith. And in Christ all worldly things may become better, and, as it were, sanctified. Theo, woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel; if I did not aim at that and possess faith and hope in Christ, it would be bad for me indeed, but no I have some courage.
For me work is an absolute necessity, indeed I can't really drag it out, I take no more pleasure in anything than in work, that's to say, pleasure in other things stops immediately and I become melancholy if I can't get on with the work.
A good painting should be the equivalent of a good deed.
Well, I am ploughing on my canvases as they do on their fields (the peasants). It goes badly enough in our profession - in fact that has always been so, but at the moment it is very bad.
I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its Founder was sublime.
One must spoil as many canvases as one succeeds with.
Yellow is capable of charming God.
Since visiting the abatoirs of S. France I have stopped eating meat.
Drawing is the root of everything, and the time spent on that is actually all profit.