4 ideas
From about 1880 until Vincent's death in 1890, his younger brother Theo, an art dealer at Goupil in Paris, sent him money every month and got back paintings and drawings in return. The letters are the running record of that exchange: gratitude, guilt, requests for paint and canvas, and reports on progress.
Vincent argued that he had no talent to fall back on, so the only way to competence was to copy the same figures and exercises again and again. He treated early clumsiness as a necessary stage of the work, not a sign he should stop.
Vincent held that peasant life should be painted coarse and earthy, so that the picture seems to smell of bacon, smoke and potato steam, not polished into prettiness. His model was 'The Potato Eaters' (1885), with its rough hands and dark tones. The idea is that the subject's own conditions should set the style, so the image stays true to the lives it shows instead of flattering them.
After seeing the Impressionists in Paris and moving to Arles, Vincent chose colour to express feeling rather than to copy what was in front of him. He described using complementary pairs, such as red against green and yellow against violet, to create tension or calm. In the night café, for example, he used these clashes to express 'the terrible passions of humanity'.