“I always think that what we need is sunshine and fine weather and blue air as the most dependable remedy.”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1888)
“The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present.”
— Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Richter translation)
“But if one wants to grow, one must fall into the earth. So I say to you, plant yourself in the soil of Drenthe — you will sprout there. Don’t shrivel up on the pavement. You’ll say that there are city plants — well yes, but you are wheat and belong in the wheatfield.”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1883)
“To paint it I would have had to kill it, and that would have been a shame since the animal was so beautiful.”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1889)
“[S]hould one not have patience, not learn patience from nature, learn patience from seeing the wheat slowly come up, the growing of things — should one think oneself such a hugely dead thing that one believed one wouldn’t grow? Should one deliberately discourage one’s development?”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1883)
“[T]here is not a moment of any day of our lives, when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure.”
— John Ruskin, Modern Painters, Volume 1 (1843)
“[I]’d almost believe that these canvases will tell you what I can’t say in words, what I consider healthy and fortifying about the countryside.”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1890)
“Sometimes there’s something indescribable in those effects — it’s as if the whole of nature is speaking — and when one goes home one has the same feeling as when one has just finished a book by Victor Hugo, for example.”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1882)
“The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the central sense can most completely and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature.”
— Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Richter translation)
“When I send you the 4 canvases of the garden I have on the go you’ll see that, considering that life happens above all in the garden, it isn’t so sad.”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1889)
“Feeling things themselves, reality, is more important than feeling paintings, at least more productive and life-giving.”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1882)
“It was extraordinarily beautiful this morning, and it did me good to go for a long walk, for with all the drawing and the lithographs I’d hardly been out of doors this week.”
— Vincent van Gogh, Letters of Vincent van Gogh (1882)
The Salon library
This is today’s sample of twelve. The whole collection is in the Salon.
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