To continue the theme (see my post Van Gogh Letters Set a New Standard for Online Manuscript Publishing) bibliodyssey published an extensive collection of sketches with excerpts from the corresponding letters – Handshakes in Thought.
To Theo from The Hague. September 1882: “Well, I hope that the small bench, even if not yet saleable, will show you that I have nothing against tackling subjects with something agreeable or pleasant about them, which are thus more likely to find buyers than things with a more sombre sentiment. [..] There’s so much paint around that it has even got onto this letter — I’m working on the big watercolour of the bench. I hope it comes off, but the great problem is to retain detail with deep tone, and clarity is extremely difficult.”
To Theo from The Hague. March 1883: “Do you remember bringing me pieces of natural chalk last summer? I tried to work with it then but couldn’t. So I was left with a few pieces that I took up again these past few days; enclosed a scratch done with it. As you see, it’s a warm, unusual black. I’d very much like you to bring some more, this summer say. It has one great advantage — the firm pieces are much easier to hold while sketching than a thin stick of conté, which has nothing to grip and breaks all the time. So it’s marvellous for sketching out of doors.”
To Theo from The Hague. October 1882: “Imagine, this week to my great surprise I received a package from home — with a winter coat, warm trousers, and a warm lady’s coat. I was very touched. The churchyard with the wooden crosses is often on my mind, so I may do some studies for it in advance – I would like to do something like that in the snow – a peasant funeral or the like. In short, an effect like the enclosed scratch of miners.”
To Theo from The Hague. March 1883: “Here’s a scratch, for example, that I did in that kind of daydream. It shows a gentleman who has had to spend the night at a village inn due to the late arrival of diligence or some such reason. Now he has risen early, and while he orders a glass of brandy for the cold he pays the innkeeper’s wife (a woman with a peasant’s cap). But it’s still very early in the morning, ‘the crack of dawn’, — he must catch the mail-coach — the moon is still shining and the glistening snow can be seen through the window of the taproom — and the objects cast oddly whimsical shadows. This story is really nothing at all, and the scratch is nothing too, but from one thing and another you’ll perhaps understand what I mean, namely that of late everything had a je ne sais quoi that made one feel like scribbling it down on paper. In short, the whole of nature is an inexpressibly beautiful Black and White exhibition when there are those snow effects.”
To Theo Van Gogh from Laken (near Brussels). November 1878: “That little drawing, ‘The Au charbonnage café’ is really nothing special, but the reason I couldn’t help making it is because one sees so many coalmen, and they really are a remarkable people. This little house is not far from Trekweg, it’s actually a simple inn right next to the big workplace where the workers come in their free time to eat their bread and drink a glass of beer.
Back during my time in England I applied for a position as an evangelist among the coal-miners, but they brushed my request aside and said I had to be at least 25 years old. You surely know that one of the root or fundamental truths, not only of the gospel but of the entire Bible, is ‘the light that dawns in the darkness’. From darkness to Light. Well then, who will most certainly need it, who will have an ear to hear it?”
Further Reading:
Van Gogh Describes Starry Night Over the Rhone to brother Theo and Eugene Boch
Another Twist in the Mystery of Van Gogh’s Ear
Van Gogh Letters Set a New Standard for Online Manuscript Publishing
