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Vincent van Gogh - Snowy Landscape with Arles in the Background 1888

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The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, between about Monday, 9 March and about Monday, 23 March 1885.
My dear Theo,
I have a few of the heads I promised you ready, but not completely dry yet. But as I already wrote, they were painted in a dark cottage and they are — studies — in the true meaning of the word.
I had already made a start on sending you study drawings in the past.
It wasn’t my intention that this shouldn’t continue.
I work hard and — suppose that only 1 in 10 or 20 of the studies that I make have something that makes them worth the trouble of looking at them — those few, be it more, be it fewer in number — although they’re worth nothing now, may well be later.
Not so much in themselves as in conjunction with other studies.
Be this as it may — I want to try it again, and so as soon as they’re completely dry and I can varnish them, I’ll send you a few heads and also a little sketch of a yarn-winder. And it certainly doesn’t have to stop there — for since I’ve devoted myself almost exclusively to painting for more than a whole year, I dare assert that these have something different from the first painted studies that I sent you.
For instance, when I saw those magnificent woodcutters by Lhermitte recently, then I know very well that a great distance still separates me from making something like that myself. Yet as regards my views and manner of searching — that is, always directly from nature or in the poor, smoke-blackened cottage — seeing his work encourages me, for I see (in details in heads and hands, for instance) how artists like Lhermitte must have studied the peasant figure not only from a fairly great distance but from very close to, not now, while they create and compose with ease and certainty, but before they did that.

They think I imagine — it isn’t true — I remember — said one whose composition was masterly.
Now for myself, I can’t yet show a single painting, not even a single drawing yet.
But I’m making studies, and precisely because of this I can very well conceive of the possibility that a time will come when I, too, will be able to compose readily.
And after all, it’s difficult to say where study stops and painting begins.
I’m thinking about a couple of larger, more worked-up things, and should I get a clear idea of how to achieve the effects I have in mind — in that case I would still keep the studies in question here, because then I would certainly need them for it. It is, for example, something like this:

[sketch]
[sketch]

Namely figures against the light from a window.
I have studies of heads for it, both against the light and facing the light, and I’ve already worked on the whole figure several times, seamstress winding yarn, or peeling potatoes. Full face and in profile. I don’t know whether I’ll get it finished, though, because it’s a difficult effect.
Still, I think I’ve learned a few things from it.

[sketch ]

Regards, I didn’t want to put off writing again any longer.
Yours truly,
Vincent

To Theo van Gogh, c/o Messrs Goupil, 19 boulevard Montmartre, Paris. Telegram, sent from Eindhoven, Friday, 27 March 1885.
sudden death, come, van gogh.

To Theo van Gogh, c/o 19 boulevard Montmartre, Paris. Telegram, sent from Eindhoven, Friday, 27 March 1885.
Our father fatal stroke, come, but it is over.

To Theo van Gogh, c/o Messrs Goupil, rue Chaptal, Paris. Telegram, sent from Eindhoven, Friday, 27 March 1885.
our father fatal stroke. van gogh