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“If Cézanne, Gauguin, and VanGogh were charlatans, they were like no other charlatans that ever lived. If their aim was notoriety, it is strange that they should have spent solitary lives of penury and toil. If they were incompetents, they were curiously intent upon the most difficult problems of their art. The kind of simplification which they attempted is not easy, nor, if accomplished, does it make a picture look better than it is. The better their pictures are, the more they look as if any one could have painted them; in fact, they look just as easy as the lyrical poems of Wordsworth or Blake.”[19]

For a glimpse of VanGogh’s life and aspirations, see his letters published in English under the title, “Letters of a Post-Impressionist,” written mostly to his brother—simple, pathetic documents, showing the eager, earnest striving of a man who finally went insane and shot himself. Critics and opponents of his work have seized upon his madness as proof of lack of sanity in what he painted—perhaps, but then is dullness the only proof positive of sanity?