IDENTITY
Letter 663 — Literature Assimilated into Peasant Painting
Arles, 1888
Content Summary
18 Aug 1888, Arles. Van Gogh says that having read La Terre and Germinal has become part of him when he paints a peasant.
CONTEXT
Topics
Literature, Peasant Painting, Artistic Ideas, Zola, Assimilation
Materials & Pigments
Related People
Vincent van Gogh, Émile Zola
Paintings
RESEARCH
Quotation
Research Focus
Van Gogh explicitly says that reading Zola’s La Terre and Germinal has become part of him when he paints a peasant, providing unusually direct evidence that literature could be absorbed into his pictorial conception rather than remain a separate intellectual interest.
Related Work / Relevance
SOURCES & EVIDENCE
Source Type
Letter
Source
Source Edition
Vincent van Gogh — The Letters, scholarly online edition (Van Gogh Museum / Huygens ING)
Source URL
Evidence Type
Primary Source, Scholarly Annotation
Related Readings
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