Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination; do not become the slave of your model.

The admonition urges an artist (or any creator) to treat study and imitation as tools rather than masters. Van Gogh is warning against letting “the model”—whether a live sitter, a teacher’s method, academic rules, or admired predecessors—dictate the work so completely that personal vision is extinguished. The pairing of “inspiration” and “imagination” suggests both the spark of feeling and the shaping power of invention; to “quench” them is to smother what makes art individual and alive. The phrase “slave of your model” frames excessive fidelity as a kind of bondage, implying that true artistic growth requires transforming what one sees through one’s own sensibility rather than merely copying.