Author: Van Gogh

Rey told me that being very impressionable was enough to have had what I had as regards the crisis, and that currently I was only anaemic, but that really I ought to feed myself up. But myself, I took the liberty of telling Mr Rey that if currently the first thing for me was to recover my strength, if by pure chance or misunderstanding it had just happened again that I’d had to keep to a rigorous one-week fast, if in similar circumstances he had seen many madmen quite calm and capable of working – and if not then would he deign to remember occasionally that for the moment I myself am not yet mad.

The mistake in pal Gauguin’s calculations was, in my opinion, that he’s a little too accustomed to closing his eyes to the inevitable expenses of house rental, charwoman and a whole heap of earthly things of that kind.

We’ve been right in the midst of magic, for as Fromentin says so well, Rembrandt is above all a magician and Delacroix a man of God, of God’s thunder and bugger off in the name of God.

I think that – in spite of myself – I won’t be able to prevent myself sending you a few canvases shortly, say within a month. I say in spite of myself, for I’m convinced that the canvases gain from drying right through here in the south, to the point where the impasto is thoroughly hardened, which takes a long time – that’s to say a year. If I restrain myself from sending them that would certainly be best. For we don’t need to show them at the moment, I’m well enough aware of that.

Gauguin works a lot – I very much like a still life with yellow background and foreground. He’s working on a portrait of me which I don’t count as one of his undertakings that don’t come to anything.

At the moment I’m really in the shit, studies, studies, studies, and that’ll go on for some time yet – such a mess that it breaks my heart – and yet that’ll give me neatness when I’m 40. From time to time a canvas that makes a painting, such as that sower, which I too think is better than the first one.

I don’t know if you’ll understand that one can speak poetry just by arranging colors well, just as one can say comforting things in music. In the same way the bizarre lines, sought out and multiplied, and snaking all over the painting, aren’t intended to render the garden in its vulgar resemblance but draw it for us as if seen in a dream, in character and yet at the same time stranger than the reality.

I’ve received a letter from Mr E. Dujardin regarding the exhibition of some canvases of mine in his dark hole. I find it so disgusting to pay for the planned exhibition with a canvas that in reality there aren’t two answers to this gentleman’s letter.

Gauguin has bought a chest of drawers for the house, various household utensils and 20 meters of very strong canvas, a whole lot of things we needed, which it was more convenient to have anyway.

I don’t yet know what Gauguin thinks about my decoration in general; I only know that there are some studies that he really does like, namely, the Sower, the Sunflowers, the Bedroom.

I’ve had gas put in, in the studio and the kitchen, which is costing me 25 francs for installation.

I’ve had gas put in the studio, so that we’ll have good light in winter.

As far as the house is concerned, the fact that it will be habitable continues to soothe me very much. Will my work be worse because by staying in the same place I’ll see the seasons come and go on the same subjects? Seeing the same orchards again in spring, the same wheatfields in summer, I’ll inevitably see my work regularly before me in advance, and can plan better. And by keeping certain studies here to make an ensemble that will hold together, after a certain time that will make a calmer body of work for you. I feel that as far as that goes, we’re pretty well on the right road. I could only wish that you were nearer here.  

We’re sparing nothing of what we have, in order to obtain some rich effect of color. And I believe that the idea of earning something as much for the pals as for ourselves will give us confidence. And in our business dealings, although we have no fixed plan, everything we do will nevertheless be based on that deep sense that we have of the present injustice suffered by the artists whom we know, and of the desire to change it as far as we can. With that idea, we can work with calmness and determination, and in short, we have nothing to fear from anyone. I’m working on a portrait of our mother because the black photograph was making me too impatient.

The weather’s still fine here, and if it was always like that it would be better than the painters’ paradise, it would be Japan altogether.

The day has been so beautiful again. My great sorrow is that you can’t see what I see here. From 7 o’clock in the morning I sat in front of what was, after all, nothing special — a round cedar or cypress bush — planted in grass.

Here you have portraitists, living for so long side by side and they don’t agree on posing for each other and they’ll separate without having portrayed each other. Well! I’m not pressing the point.