Vincent Van Gogh. Letters to his brother Theo (№ 418351)

I've always loved Dora's words, "I have the patience of an ox." I see something good in them, a certain conviction and honesty; in short, these words have a deep meaning, they are the saying of a genuine artist. When you think of the people from whose hearts such words pour out, all the chatter about the "natural giftedness" that you so often hear from the dealers of paintings seems to me a vile croak. "I have patience" - how restrained and dignified it sounds! Such dealers in paintings will never say, even if not everything they say is like a crow's croak. "I'm not an artist" - how can you speak so harshly about yourself? Is it not possible to become patient, is it not possible to learn patience from nature, seeing how slowly wheat ripens, seeing how everything grows? How can you consider yourself so dead as to assume that you will never grow again? Is it possible to deliberately hinder one's own development? I say all this to explain why talking about whether you are gifted or not seems so silly to me.