“I am always doing what I can’t do yet in order to learn how to do it.”
— Vincent van Gogh, letter to Anthon van Rappard, August 18, 1885 I first encountered this quote during one of the worst professional weeks of my life. My manager had handed me a project that required skills I simply didn’t have — data modeling, stakeholder presentations, budget forecasting. I felt completely exposed. A colleague slid a sticky note across my desk on a Tuesday afternoon with nothing written on it except these words, no name, no context, just the quote. I didn’t know who said it. I didn’t even care at that moment. Something about the sentence cracked me open in a way I hadn’t expected. It wasn’t motivational-poster energy. It felt like a confession from someone who had also been terrified — and kept going anyway. That feeling sent me down a long research rabbit hole, and what I found surprised me completely. [image: A young woman sitting cross-legged on a worn wooden floor surrounded by scattered open books and handwritten notes, caught in a candid moment of sudden realization — her eyes wide, mouth slightly open, one hand frozen mid-reach toward a page as if she just discovered something unexpected, the other hand pressed flat against her cheek in genuine surprise. Soft afternoon window light falls across her face and the cluttered research materials around her, illuminating dust motes in the air. Shot from a low angle slightly to the side, capturing the authentic unguarded expression of someone deep in a personal discovery moment, natural and unposed.] The quote belongs to Vincent van Gogh. However, for decades, many people have credited it to Pablo Picasso instead. The misattribution spread quietly through emails, motivational websites, and social media posts. Therefore, understanding where this sentence truly came from — and how it got tangled up with the wrong painter — tells us something fascinating about how wisdom travels through time. — The Earliest Known Appearance: A Letter from Nuenen, 1885 Vincent van Gogh wrote this sentence in Dutch on August 18, 1885. He addressed the letter to his friend and fellow painter Anthon van Rappard. At that point in his life, Van Gogh was deeply absorbed in painting peasant laborers — rough, physical, unglamorous work that demanded enormous technical skill. The original Dutch sentence reads: > “Maar ik maak steeds wat ik nog niet kan om het te leeren kunnen.”
Translated literally, this means: “But I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it.” The sentence appeared within a longer passage where Van Gogh defended his artistic progress to Van Rappard. He acknowledged the difficulty of the work. He also pushed back against any suggestion that he lacked foundation or discipline. Here is the fuller context from that 1885 letter: > “The work in question, painting the peasants, is such laborious work that the extremely weak would never even embark on it. And I have at least embarked on it and have laid certain foundations, which isn’t exactly the easiest part of the job! And I’ve grasped some solid and useful things in drawing and in painting, more firmly than you think, my dear friend. But I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it.” This context matters enormously. Van Gogh wasn’t writing a motivational slogan. He was defending himself — passionately, almost desperately — to a peer who doubted him. The quote emerged from real friction, real self-doubt, and real determination.
The English Translation That Spread the Quote For decades, this Dutch sentence remained largely inaccessible to English-speaking readers. That changed significantly in 1979. A three-volume collection titled The Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh received a prominent review in The New York Times on February 10, 1979. The reviewer, Anatole Broyard, quoted Van Gogh’s own description of his work directly. He wrote: ”His own description of his work is best: ‘I am always doing what I can’t do yet in order to learn how to do it.’” This translation is slightly different from the more literal Dutch rendering. However, it carries the same essential meaning and flows more naturally in English. The New York Times News Service distributed this review widely. As a result, newspapers across America reprinted it. Consequently, Van Gogh’s sentence began reaching readers far beyond the art world. It entered the broader cultural conversation through the back door of a book review — not a gallery, not an art history course, not a biography. This distribution moment matters. It explains why the quote gained traction in English-speaking culture during the 1980s and 1990s. Additionally, it explains why the attribution remained relatively stable as Van Gogh’s for those early years. Van Gogh’s Life and the Philosophy Behind the Words To fully appreciate this quote, you need to understand who Van Gogh was when he wrote it. In August 1885, he was 32 years old and living in Nuenen, a small village in the Netherlands. He had only seriously committed to painting about five years earlier. He was largely self-taught. He struggled constantly with technique, with money, and with human relationships. He painted peasants obsessively during this period. His most famous work from this era, The Potato Eaters, came from the same year as this letter. That painting itself represents the quote’s philosophy made visible — a difficult, ambitious attempt at something he wasn’t yet fully equipped to execute. Van Gogh’s letters reveal a man who thought deeply about the relationship between action and learning. He didn’t believe in waiting until you were ready. Instead, he believed that readiness only arrived through doing — through repeated, imperfect, courageous attempts. This philosophy shows up across his correspondence. He frequently wrote about struggling with new techniques. He described failures openly. Meanwhile, he kept painting — sometimes producing multiple works per day during his most productive periods.
How the Misattribution to Picasso Happened The Picasso attribution appeared publicly by 1995. A user in the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.diplomacy posted the quote with Picasso’s name attached. This was a casual, uncited attribution — the kind that spreads easily online precisely because no one questions it. Here is the critical problem with the Picasso attribution: Picasso died in April 1973. The first documented appearance of this attribution to him came more than two decades after his death. No verified primary source — no letter, no interview, no documented speech — connects Picasso to this sentence. In contrast, Van Gogh’s version traces directly to a specific letter, a specific date, a specific recipient, and a specific context. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam maintains the full archive of his letters. Researchers can access letter number 528 and read the original Dutch text themselves. Why did the Picasso attribution gain traction? Several factors likely contributed. First, Picasso is arguably the most famous artist of the twentieth century, making his name instantly recognizable and emotionally resonant. Second, the quote’s theme — bold experimentation, pushing beyond current ability — fits the popular image of Picasso as a restless artistic innovator. Third, internet culture in the 1990s and early 2000s circulated quotes with minimal fact-checking. As a result, a misattribution could travel from a Usenet post to thousands of email signatures in weeks. By 1997, the Van Gogh attribution was already circulating in email signatures. A computer columnist in The San Diego Union-Tribune mentioned a web designer named Ammon Haggerty who used the quote correctly attributed to Van Gogh in his email signature. This shows that both attributions coexisted during the late 1990s — the correct one and the incorrect one running parallel through different digital channels. Variations in the Quote’s Wording One of the interesting complications with this quote is that it exists in multiple English versions. These variations emerged naturally from different translation choices. Consider the main variants: – “I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it.” – “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – “I am always doing what I can’t do yet in order to learn how to do it.” – “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” None of these versions is wrong, exactly. They all translate the same Dutch original. However, the differences matter for how the quote circulates. The version with “always” and “yet” has become the most widely shared online version. It feels slightly more personal and immediate than the more formal “that which I cannot do” phrasing. Additionally, the presence of the word “yet” carries significant psychological weight. It implies that the inability is temporary — a current limitation, not a permanent one. This subtle difference makes the quote feel more hopeful and actionable to modern readers. Therefore, the “yet” version tends to resonate more strongly in motivational and educational contexts. A Parallel Idea: Fred Beerstein and Learning by Doing Interestingly, the same core idea appeared independently in a 1988 Los Angeles Times article about science education. A science teacher named Fred Beerstein told a story about a man who wanted to learn violin. The man attended a concert, went home to practice, and discovered he was terrible. Beerstein’s punchline: ”You need to do it in order to learn how to do it. The same is true for teaching.” This parallel is worth noting. Van Gogh expressed the same philosophy in 1885. Beerstein articulated it independently in a classroom context a century later. This convergence suggests the idea itself is timeless — it reflects something true about human learning that multiple people across different eras have discovered on their own. The violin story also makes the philosophy concrete in a way that Van Gogh’s more abstract statement doesn’t. Together, they reinforce each other. Furthermore, the fact that a science teacher arrived at the same conclusion as a post-impressionist painter suggests this isn’t artistic philosophy — it’s universal learning theory.
Why This Quote Resonates So Deeply Today Modern psychology has a term for the philosophy Van Gogh described: learning by doing, or experiential learning. Researchers have studied this concept extensively. Additionally, the growth mindset framework developed by psychologist Carol Dweck aligns closely with Van Gogh’s instinct. However, Van Gogh didn’t need academic frameworks. He arrived at the same conclusion through raw experience — through painting badly, repeatedly, until he painted well. His letters document this process in painful, honest detail. He described frustration, failure, and the specific technical problems he couldn’t yet solve. Meanwhile, he kept working. This is why the quote lands so hard for so many people. It doesn’t promise that doing something difficult will feel good. It doesn’t promise quick results. Instead, it simply describes a method: attempt the thing you can’t do, because that’s the only path to being able to do it. For anyone learning a new skill — coding, cooking, parenting, public speaking, writing — this sentence captures something true and uncomfortable. You will be bad at it first. Additionally, being bad at it is not a detour from the learning process. It is the learning process. The Cultural Journey from Letter to Legend Trace the quote’s path and you see how wisdom moves through culture. Van Gogh writes it in Dutch in 1885, defending himself to a friend. It sits in his correspondence for nearly a century. Then a book review in 1979 lifts it into English and sends it through American newspapers. By the 1990s, it travels through Usenet and email. By the 2000s, it appears on motivational websites, often with the wrong name attached. Today, you’ll find it on coffee mugs, Instagram posts, classroom walls, and startup pitch decks. Sometimes it credits Van Gogh correctly. Often it credits Picasso incorrectly. Occasionally it appears with no attribution at all — just the sentence, floating free of its origin, doing its work regardless. The irony is fitting. Source Van Gogh himself was largely unrecognized during his lifetime. His ideas now circulate globally, sometimes under someone else’s name. Even in posthumous fame, he keeps teaching — and the lesson keeps getting misattributed. What This Quote Actually Demands of You It’s easy to share this quote. It’s harder to live it. Van Gogh wasn’t describing a comfortable philosophy. He was describing something exhausting — the daily discipline of attempting work that exceeds your current ability. That requires tolerating failure. It requires resisting the urge to only do what you already do well. In a culture that rewards polished output and visible expertise, Van Gogh’s approach feels almost countercultural. Source However, every expert you admire passed through a long period of doing exactly what he described — attempting the thing they couldn’t yet do, badly and repeatedly, until they could. The quote isn’t a comfort. It’s a challenge. And it came from a man who painted over 900 works in roughly a decade, most of them during periods of poverty, isolation, and mental illness. He didn’t just say this. He lived it, every day, in the fields of Nuenen and the streets of Arles and the corridors of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. The Correct Attribution, Clearly Stated Vincent van Gogh wrote this sentence. He wrote it in Dutch on August 18, 1885. He sent it to Anthon van Rappard. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam holds the original letter. Multiple English translations exist, and all of them trace back to this single source. Pablo Picasso did not write or say this. No primary source connects him to it. The misattribution appeared online after his death and spread without evidence. Therefore, whenever you share this quote, credit it correctly — to Van Gogh. The sentence deserves its true author. A man who spent his life doing what he couldn’t yet do, in order to learn how to do it, and who left behind some of the most emotionally powerful paintings in human history as proof that the method works. That’s not a motivational slogan. That’s a life philosophy, written in a letter, by a struggling artist, to a doubtful friend, on an August afternoon in 1885. And it still lands exactly as hard today as it must have felt to write.