Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (2 July 1889) ... your parents assures long
life.
Thank you very much for the package of colours. Subtract
them from the order sent since, but if you could manage it,
not for the quantity of white. Thank you also very
heartily for the Shakespeare. It will help me not to forget the
little English I know, but above all it is so fine. I have
begun to read the series of which I knew least, which formerly,
distracted by other things or not having the time, I could not
read; the series of the kings: I have already read Richard II,
Henry IV and half of Henry V. I read without wondering if the
ideas of the people of those times were different from our own,
or what would become of them if you confronted them with
republican and socialist beliefs and so on. But what touches
me, as in some novelists of our day, is that the voices of
these people, which in Shakespeare's case reach us from a
distance of several centuries, do not seem unfamiliar to us. It
is so much alive that you think you know them...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (6 July 1889) ... apart and has always cost me a
lot.
Thank you very much for the package of colours and canvas,
which I am very glad to have. I hope to go and do the olives
again. Unfortunately there are very few vineyards here.
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (c. 9 July 1889) ... he suffers a good deal from his
gout.
I have received the second package of canvases and paints
and I thank you very much for them.
The last canvas I have done is a view of mountains with a
dark hut at the bottom among some olive trees.
I expect you will be greatly absorbed by the thought of the
child who is to come; I am very glad it is so; I dare think
that in time you will find a good deal of inner tranquility
that way.
The fact that in Paris you take on, as it were, a second
nature, which over and above the preoccupation of business and
art makes you less strong than the peasants—that fact
does not prevent you from linking yourself through the bonds of
a wife and child, with this simpler and truer nature, the ideal
of which keeps haunting us.
What a business, that Sécretan sale! I am
always pleased that the Millets hold their own. But I should
very much like to see more good reproductions of Millet, so as
to reach the people.
His...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (5 or 6 September 1889) ... much like
to see what they are doing.
I must ask for the following things for painting.
10 meters of canvas
Large tubes 6 tubes zinc white
2 tubes emerald green
2 tubes cobalt
Small tubes 2 carmine
1 vermilion
1 large tube crimson lake
6 marten brushes, black hair
Then I promised the attendant here a copy of Le Monde
Illustré, No. 1684, July 6, 1889, in which there
is a pretty engraving after Demont-Breton.
There! The reaper is finished. I think it'll be one of those
you'll keep at home - it's an image of death as the great book
of nature speaks of it - but the effect I've been looking for
is - “on the point of smiling.” It's all yellow,
except for a line of purple hills. A pale and golden yellow. I
find it odd that I saw it like that through the iron bars of a
cell.
Well, do you know what I hope for, once I allow myself begin
to hope? It is that the family will be for you what nature,...
Letter from Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh (7 or 8 September 1889) ... that are not
exactly easy or simple.
Please send me the canvas soon, if at all possible,
and I think I'm also going to need 10 more tubes of zinc
white.
All the same, I'm sure that if one is brave then recovery
comes from within, through the complete acceptance of suffering
and death, and through the surrender of one's will and love of
self. But that's no good to me, I like to paint, to see people
and things and everything that makes our life - artificial, if
you like. Yes, real life would be something else, but I don't
think I belong to that category of souls who are ready to live,
and also ready to suffer, at any moment.
