Van Gogh on the effort required by painting

From a letter dated c. May 20, 1888:

“And sometimes one lacks the will to throw oneself back wholeheartedly into art, and to regain one’s capacity for it. One knows one is a cab horse, and that one is going to be hitched up to the same old cart again—and that one would rather not, and would prefer to live in a meadow, with sunshine, a river, other horses for company as free as oneself, and the act of procreation . . .

“We do not feel we are dying, but we do feel that in reality we count for little, and that to be a link in the chain of artists we are paying a high price in health, in youth, in liberty, none of which we enjoy, any more than does the cab horse pulling a coach load of people out enjoying themselves in spring.”
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