A recent charcoal study

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Studies made in the open air are different from pictures that are destined to be shown in public.  The latter, in my opinion, result from the studies, but they may, or even must, differ a great deal from them.  For in the picture the painter rather gives a personal impression, while in a study his aim is simply to analyze a bit of nature – either to make his idea or conception more correct, or to find a new idea; for example, the studies of Mauve, which I myself like very much, precisely because of their soberness and because they are done so faithfully.  Still they miss a certain charm, which the pictures that result from them possess in such a high degree.

I believe one gets more sound ideas when thoughts arise from direct contact with things than when one looks at them with the set purpose of finding certain facts in them.  It is the same with the question of a colour scheme.  There are colours that harmonize wonderfully, but I try my best to paint a subject as I see it before I set to work to make it as I feel it.  Yet feeling is a great thing, and without it one would not be able to do anything.  Thus, studies belong more to the studio than among the pubic.

Dear Theo:  The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh, edited by Irving Stone

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