“One must maintain a little bit of summer, even in the middle of winter.”
Henry David Thoreau · Journal, January 1852
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It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to.
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About this quote
Meaning
Van Gogh is arguing that the most important teacher for any painter is not received artistic tradition or the advice of fellow artists, but direct, honest looking at the world itself. By placing nature above the language of painters, he is pushing back against the idea that art is mainly learned by studying other art. True vision, he suggests, comes from setting aside inherited frameworks and paying attention to what is actually there.
Context
Van Gogh wrote this in a letter to his brother Theo in 1885, a period when he was working intensively in the Netherlands and developing his approach to color, light, and form. His correspondence with Theo was enormous and remarkably candid, functioning as a running artistic diary. During this period he was thinking hard about how to paint truthfully, and his letters frequently wrestle with the tension between learning from masters and trusting one's own direct perception of the world.
About the author
Vincent van Gogh (1853 to 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work became enormously influential in the development of modern art, though he received little recognition during his lifetime. He produced a large body of paintings and drawings in roughly a decade of serious work, exploring color and emotion with unusual intensity. The letters he exchanged with his brother Theo survive as a deeply personal record of his artistic thinking and inner life.
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