Van Gogh: Expressive With a Brush, or a Pen - New York Times

Although his career lasted only a decade, van Gogh created about 1,100 known drawings, capturing everything around him, from peasants and postmen to landscapes and interiors. Drawing was as important a way to record his thoughts as the letters he wrote to his family and friends. Vincent van Gogh considered drawing to be "the root of everything." He once confided to his brother, Theo, that he could not stop drawing because "I really have a draftsman's fist, and I ask you, have I ever doubted or hesitated or wavered since the day I began to draw? I think you know quite well that I pushed on, and of course I gradually grew stronger in the battle." That situation may change next week, when the Met unveils "Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings," the first major exhibition of the artist's drawings ever held in the United States.