Reaping on heavenly harvest
Vincent van Gogh died at the age of thirty-seven. The following day eight of his friends came and decked the small room where his coffin lay with some of his paintings. It was only then that they realised how beautiful they were.
Vincent had a very difficult life. He knew loneliness, poverty and mental illness, with few friends to support him. But now that he was dead, as often happens, everybody was full of praise for his talents.
He once said: ‘I think that those who do not lose courage and who do not become indifferent, ripen through it. One must bear hardship in order to ripen. Most people who know me consider me a failure. Still, life is only a kind of sowing, the harvest is not here.’
Today his canvasses are almost beyond price. Yet only one of them was sold while he was still alive. It was sold for a few hundred francs. Vincent certainly did not reap an earthly harvest.
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