Author: Parker Ito

Now I’ll tell you that I’m working on the 2 paintings of which I wanted to make repetitions. The pink peach tree is giving me the most trouble.

The colorman here made absorbent canvas for me, but he’s so lazy about doing it that I’ve decided to have everything sent from Paris or Marseille, and give up — having lost all patience — the idea of getting him to do it. (While waiting for a no. 30 absorbent canvas I painted two on non-absorbent canvas.)

I’m in a fury of work as the trees are in blossom and I wanted to do a Provence orchard of tremendous gaiety.

Had some trouble with the sunset with figures and a bridge that I was talking to Bernard about. As the bad weather prevented me from working on the spot, I completely worked this study to death trying to finish it at home.  

I’ve just done a clump of apricot trees in a little fresh green orchard.

Rain and wind these past few days, I’ve worked at home on the study of which I’ve made a croquis in Bernard’s letter. My aim was to give it colors like stained glass, and a design of solid outlines.

I have company in the evening, because the young Danish painter who’s here is very nice; his work is dry, correct and timid, but I’m not averse to that when the person is young and intelligent. At one time he’d begun to study medicine, he knows the works of Zola, De Goncourt and Guy de Maupassant, and he has enough money to have an easy time of it. Besides that he has a very serious wish to do something different from what he’s doing at present. I think he’d do well to put off returning home for a year, or to come back after a short visit to his compatriots.

For Christ’s sake, when are we going to see a generation of artists with healthy bodies? Sometimes I’m really furious with myself because it isn’t good enough to be iller or less ill than others, the ideal thing would be to have a strong enough constitution to live for 80 years and along with that, blood that was real good blood.

I’ve bought some coarse canvas here and I’ve had it prepared for matt effects, I can now get everything, more or less, at Paris prices.

But what can one do, unfortunately it’s complicated in several ways, my paintings are worthless, they cost me an extraordinary amount, it’s true, perhaps sometimes even in blood and brain. I won’t press the point, and what do you want me to say about it.

Once again, let’s try to seize our fate in whatever form it comes.