Van Gogh : The Love of Nature

"I've got nature and art and poetry, and if that isn't enough, what is ?"

Vincent van Gogh

To Theo van Gogh, January 1874

The pink orchard, 1888

The garden of the Asylum at Saint-Remy, 1889

"The best pictures are always those one dreams of when one is smoking a pipe in bed, but which never get done. But still one ought to try, however incompetent one may feel before the unspeakable perfection and radiant splendour of nature."

Vincent van Gogh

Letter to Émile Bernard

Landscape from Saint-Rémy, 1889

Landscape with Couple Walking and Crescent Moon ; Saint-Rémy, 1890

"But I repeat, everyone who works with love and intelligence finds a kind

of armour against the opinion of other people in the very sincerity of his love

for nature and art. Nature is also severe and, so to speak, hard ;

but she never deceives and always helps us on."

Vincent van Gogh

To Theo van Gogh, 26 July 1882

The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, 1884

Toward Evening, 1885

"If I had no love for nature or my work, then I should indeed be misfortunate.

The worse I get along with people, the more I learn to have faith in nature

and to concentrate on her."

Vincent van Gogh

To Theo van Gogh, 26 July 1882

Landscape at Dusk, 1885

Landscape at Twilight, 1890

"But precisely for one’s health, as you say – it’s very necessary to work

in the garden and to see the flowers growing."

Vincent van Gogh

Letter to his mother

Garden of the Hospital in Arles, 1889

Flowering Garden ; Arles, July 1888

"For my part, I’m wholly absorbed in the vast expanse of wheat fields against the hills, large as a sea, delicate yellow, delicate pale green, delicate purple of a ploughed

and weeded piece of land, regularly speckled with the green of flowering potato plants,

all under a sky with delicate blue, white, pink, violet tones."

Vincent van Gogh

Letter to his mother

The olive trees, 1889

Landscape Field at Arles

"How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning."

Vincent van Gogh

To Theo van Gogh, 22 March 1877

Sprig of flowering almond in a glass, 1888

Daubigny's Garden ; Auvers-sur-Oise, June 1890

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