What most fires me - much, much more than any of the others in my line of work - is the modern portrait. I'm trying to do it with color and am certainly not the only one to try to do it this way. I should like - you see I'm far from saying that I'm able to do all this, but ultimately this is where I'm headed - I should like to make portraits which a hundred years later will appear as apparitions to people living then.
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Van Gogh to his younger sister Wilhelmina
June 3, 1890
