Van Gogh: Painted With Words Page #2

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I hope not to forget that drawing,

nor what it seems to be saying to me.

Vincent became an ardent visitor

to London's great museums and galleries.

And he shared with Theo his growing enthusiasm for the art and literature

he was becoming increasingly attached to.

English art didn't appeal to me much at first,

one has to get used to it.

But there are some good artists here.

Millais, who painted Huguenot and Ophelia - they're very beautiful.

And then there's Turner,

after whom you'll probably have seen engravings.

"Where are the songs of spring?

"Aye, where are they?

"Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,

"while barred clouds bloom

"the soft-dying day, and touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue."

The last few days I've enjoyed reading the poems of John Keats.

He's a poet who isn't very well known in Holland, I believe, but

he's a favourite of the painters here, which is

how I came to be reading him.

Vincent developed a passion for English popular art,

as seen in the black and white prints in The Graphic and Illustrated London News,

eventually collecting a thousand of them.

In my view, prints like these together form a kind of Bible

for an artist, in which he reads now and again to get into a mood.

It's good not only to know them but to have them in the studio once and for all.

For me, the English draughtsmen are what Dickens is in the sphere of literature.

Noble and healthy, and something one always comes back to.

Amongst his collection was this print of Dickens' empty chair.

The social realist subject matter of the prints

and Dickens' writings about London's working class

living in squalid poverty,

left a lasting impression on Vincent.

"The mud lay thick upon the stones

"and a black mist hung over the streets.

"The hideous, old man seemed like some loathsome reptile,

"crawling forth by night,

"in search of some rich offal for a meal."

There's such a yearning for religion among the people in those big cities.

Many a worker in a factory or shop

has had a remarkably pious, pure youth.

George Eliot describes the life of factory workers

who hold religious services in a chapel in Lantern Yard.

"The pulpit

"where the minister delivered unquestioned doctrine, and swayed

"to and fro"

"..and handled the book in a long-accustomed manner.

"These had been the channel of divine influences

"for Silas Marner.

"They were the fostering home of his religious emotions,

"they were Christianity

"and God's kingdom upon Earth."

Reading George Eliot's novels about English evangelism

reminded Vincent of his own upbringing in a religious home.

Wanting now to follow in his father's footsteps,

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