“What I’m most passionate about, much much more than all the rest in my profession – is the portrait, the modern portrait. – To Willemien van Gogh. Auvers-sur-Oise,1890.

“What I’m most passionate about, much much more than all the rest in my profession – is the portrait, the modern portrait. – To Willemien van Gogh. Auvers-sur-Oise,1890.

“What I’m most passionate about, much much more than all the rest in my profession – is the portrait, the modern portrait. I seek it by way of colour, and am certainly not alone in seeking it in this way. I would like, you see I’m far from saying that I can do all this, but anyway I’m aiming at it, I would like to do portraits which would look like apparitions to people a century later.”

• To Willemien van Gogh. Auvers-sur-Oise,1890.

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