Van Gogh on the expenses of painting

From a letter dated August 11, 1888:

“The only choice I have myself is being a good painter or a bad one. I choose the first. But the needs of painting are like those of a ruinously expensive mistress, one can do nothing without money, and one never has enough of it. Painting should thus be done at public expense instead of overburdening the artist. But there, we should keep our own counsel, because no-one is forcing us to work, indifference towards painting being inevitably pretty general, pretty well permanent.”
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