Van Gogh: "I call myself a peasant painter"

"When I call myself a peasant painter, that is a real fact, and it will become more and more clear to you in the future, I feel at home there" - Quote of Vincent, Summer 1885

"If you hear a voice within you saying, "You are not a painter," then by all means paint, boy, and that voice will be silenced, but only by working.

He who goes to trends and tells his troubles when he feels like that loses part of his manliness, part of the best that's in him; your friends can only be those who themselves struggle against it, who raise your activity by their own example of action" - Quote in his letter to brother Theo from Drenthe, The Netherlands, Oct. 1883, 'Van Gogh's Letters

"And it's certain that unexpected new ideas are beginning to emerge.

That paintings are once again beginning to be painted in very different tone from a few years ago.

The last thing I made is a rather large study of an avenue of poplars with the yellow autumn leaves, where the sun makes glittering patches here and there on the fallen leaves on the ground, which are interspersed with the long shadows cast by the trunks. At the end of the road a peasant cottage, and the blue sky above it between the autumn leaves.

I think that in a year's time - having spent that year once again painting a great deal and constantly - I'll change my manner of painting and my colour a great deal, and that I'm likely to become slightly more sombre rather than lighter" - Quote from Vincent's letter to Theo van Gogh, from Nuenen, The Netherlands, on or about Saturday, 25 October 1884