For many, the winter months are bleak; gray days and harsh weather seeming to stretch on without an end in sight. Van Gogh often felt this way. In a letter to his brother Theo from 1879, Van Gogh wrote,
“It is sometimes so bitterly cold in the winter that one says, `The cold is too awful for me to care whether summer is coming or not; the harm outdoes the good.’ But with or without our approval, the severe weather does come to an end eventually and one fine morning the wind changes and there is the thaw. When I compare the state of the weather to our state of mind and our circumstances, subject to change and fluctuation like the weather, then I still have some hope that things may get better.”
During the winter, museums are a great place to go to soak up some culture while escaping the weather. Now with the launch of Google’s Art Project this week, you don’t even have to leave the comfort of your home to see the inside of a museum directly from your computer. So be sure to take a break this winter and enjoy the views from indoors. Great works of art will inspire and rejuvenate as they did for Van Gogh:
“At the moment we have here Émile Breton’s picture, “Sunday Morning.” You know it, don’t you? It is a village street of cottages and barns, and at the end is the church, surrounded by poplars. Everything is covered with snow, and little black figures are going to church. It tells us that winter is cold but that human hearts are warm.” Vincent to Theo, December 10, 1875.
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Letters Source:
http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/8/132.htm
http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/3/048.htm