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A 19th century Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who remains one of the most influential artists in Western art. He lived the last three years of his life in Arles, in French Provence, where he produced the majority of his most famous work—about 200 paintings and 100 drawings—during just 15 months. After a series of eye-opening encounters with the work of writers and other painters, van Gogh became convinced that he could portray the South of France in a way that no previous artist had before, and, accordingly, teach people to see the region in an entirely new light. Although van Gogh abandoned the classical ideal that painting should “render on canvas an accurate version of the visual world,” Alain de Botton does not see this shift as a rejection of artistic realism but rather as a new, innovative form of it, one that foregrounded the colors and motion of Provence’s landscape—which van Gogh took as its true essence—rather than its proportions and lines. A series of plaques in and around Arles memorialize van Gogh’s life and work, and in his seventh essay de Botton follows this “van Gogh trail” on a quest to see Provence’s beauty, which was previously hidden from him.
Vincent van Gogh Quotes in The Art of Travel
The The Art of Travel quotes below are all either spoken by Vincent van Gogh or refer to Vincent van Gogh. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 7 Quotes
Because we find places to be beautiful as immediately and apparently spontaneously as we find snow to be cold or sugar sweet, it is hard to imagine that there is anything we might do to alter or expand our attractions. It seems that matters have been decided for us by qualities inherent in the places themselves or by hardwiring in our psyches, and that we would therefore be as helpless to modify our sense of the places we find beautiful as we would our preference for the ice creams we find appetizing.
Yet aesthetic tastes may be less rigid than this analogy suggests. We overlook certain places because nothing has ever prompted us to conceive of them as being worthy of appreciation, or because some unfortunate but random association has turned us against them.
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As he wonders why he (unlike so many “sensible people”) does not find Provence particularly beautiful, de Botton asks whether people’s aesthetic senses are truly inherent or can be affected by learning, effort, and circumstance. While he acknowledges the appeal of believing that people simply like things or do not, and that they therefore lack any real control over what they will feel in any given place, he rejects this thesis and maintains his faith in people’s ability to adopt new perspectives on beauty. De Botton’s insistence that aesthetic standards are mutable foreshadows the lessons he learns from van Gogh: Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro per
It was for van Gogh the mark of every great painter to enable viewers to see certain aspects of the world more clearly.
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Van Gogh decided to move to Provence because he wanted to help people see what no other artist had seen in the region before: its people, its seasons, and especially its rich colors. But his faith in art’s ability to change broader social perspectives on the world stemmed initially from his encounters with other artists, who allowed him—just as he allows de Botton—to see details and forms of beauty in the world that he had never noticed before. For instance, he notices that Arles’s restaurants have the color of a Carvaggio painting and connects the dots, realizing that the artist Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. R
‘Completely true to nature!’—what a lie:
How could nature ever be constrained into a picture?
The smallest bit of nature is infinite!
And so he paints what he likes about it.
And what does he like? He likes what he can paint!
Nietzsche 188
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German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche’s reflections on artistic realism justify de Botton’s defense of Vincent van Gogh against critics who thought the Dutch painter misrepresented the reality of Provence. Van Gogh focused on color and contrast, which he thought captured the true psychological impact of being in Provence and therefore the essence of the region’s visual character. But classical ideologies of representation focused on line and form, which van Gogh was willing to sacrifice. Nietzsche argued that there were various “real” views of any particular object, and that therefore the classical version could not have been considered any “truer” to the Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Eligendi atque placeat. Molestiae earum eum. Libero sit beatae. At a deserunt. Sint aperiam consequatur. Minima porro perferendis. Sit neque odit. Tenetur qui dignissimos. Qui et ut. Voluptate labore corporis. Hic tempore laborum. Nisi quia ea. Quia soluta itaque. Deleniti nisi earum. Ad tenetur laboriosam. Eum accusamus harum. Accusantium iusto voluptas. Totam
A few years after van Gogh’s stay in Provence, Oscar Wilde remarked that there had been no fog in London before Whistler painted it. Surely, too, there were fewer cypresses in Provence before van Gogh painted them.
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Oscar Wilde’s witty claim about the British painter James McNeill Whistler, who was famous for his depictions of the London fog, exemplifies how artistic representation can open observers’ eyes to new features and forms of beauty in the world. De Botton suggests that van Gogh’s unique depiction of cypress trees, which he noticed looked like “a flame flickering nervously in the wind,” transformed visitors’ interest in the trees and led to their being considered a distinctive feature of Provence’s landscape. When an artist like van Gogh so completely captures the popular imagination of a place (as Wordsworth did with the Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non inventore in. Elige
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Vincent van Gogh Character Timeline in The Art of Travel
The timeline below shows where the character Vincent van Gogh appears in The Art of Travel. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 7: On Eye-Opening Art
In 1888, Vincent van Gogh came to Provence at age 34, early in his painting career, after he had failed...
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Van Gogh ’s professed motivations for moving to Arles were that he wanted to paint and help...
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But van Gogh also thought that previous artists “completely missed the essentials” in Southern France: Arles’s “middle-aged middle-class...
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In the farmhouse, de Botton reads a book on van Gogh because he cannot fall asleep and then, the next morning, anxiously eats three pains au...
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...which stem from special climactic features that leave the skies cloudless and the vegetation lush. Van Gogh picked up on Provence’s rich primary colors, but earlier painters did not, so he broke...
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...tourist office is unassuming and conventional, offering the usual maps and pamphlets, but it emphasizes van Gogh and especially the “van Gogh trail” built 100 years after the painter’s death, which memorializes...
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According to the tour guide, in May 1888, three months after he arrived in Arles, van Gogh moved from his hotel to a building called the “Yellow House” and insisted that the...
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Next, the tour goes to fields where van Gogh used to paint, and the group compares the scenery to his work. One Australian woman...
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...in the earlier quote from this chapter—art can never capture the entirety of reality. For van Gogh , capturing the salient part of reality actually meant distorting and omitting other parts of...
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Indeed, as van Gogh wrote to his brother, he decided to “use colour more arbitrarily, in order to express...
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...de Botton, like most of the people on the walk, finds himself newly enthusiastic about van Gogh and Provence’s landscape, he also thinks of a distressing quote from Pascal: “how vain painting...
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