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ResetEveryone here is good towards me, the neighbors & c., good and attentive as in one’s native country.
I’m beginning to see the advantages here. For myself, I’m in better health here than in the north — I even work in the wheatfields at midday, in the full heat of the sun, without any shade whatever, and there you are, I revel in it like a cicada. My God, if only I’d known this country at 25, instead of coming here at 35 — in those days I was enthusiastic about grey, or rather, absence of colour. I was always dreaming about Millet, and then I had acquaintances in Holland in the category of painters like Mauve, Israëls.
Since I’m feeling better now I really don’t consider myself defeated, and besides, if I’d had my health, which I hope to get back here, that and many other things wouldn’t happen to me.
Because the people here, in order to make me pay pretty high rates for EVERYTHING, make too much of the fact that I take up a little more room with my paintings than their other customers who aren’t painters. For my part, I’ll make the point that I’m staying longer and spend more in the guest-house than laborers who just stay a short time. And they won’t get a sou out of me so easily any more.
As far as work goes, I brought home a no.15 canvas today, it’s a drawbridge, with a little carriage going across it, outlined against a blue sky — the river blue as well, the banks orange with greenery, a group of washerwomen wearing blouses and multicoloured bonnets. And another landscape with a little rustic bridge and washerwomen as well. Lastly an avenue of plane trees near the station. 12 studies altogether since I’ve been here.
Now I’ll tell you that for a start, there’s been a snowfall of at least 60 centimetres all over, and it’s still snowing. Arles doesn’t seem any bigger than Breda or Mons to me.
Here – the so-called good town of Arles is a funny place which for good reasons friend Gauguin calls the filthiest place in the south.
I myself think that Gauguin had become a little disheartened by the good town of Arles, by the little yellow house where we work, and above all by me. Indeed, there are bound to be grave difficulties still to overcome here, for him as well as for me. But these difficulties are rather within ourselves than elsewhere. All in all, I think personally that he’ll either definitely go or he’ll definitely stay. I told him to think and do his sums again before acting. Gauguin is very strong, very creative, but precisely because of that he must have peace. Will he find it elsewhere if he doesn’t find it here?
I’m hard at work here. For my part I find the summer here very beautiful, more beautiful than any I ever experienced in the north, but the people here are complaining a great deal that it’s not the same as usual. Rain now and then in a morning or afternoon, but infinitely less than at home. The harvest already long in. It’s very windy, though, and a very nasty, nagging wind, the mistral, usually troublesome enough when I have to paint in it, like when I lay my canvas flat on the ground and work on my knees. Because the easel doesn’t stand firm.
And when I sit down to write I am so abstracted by recollections of what I have seen that I leave the letter. For instance at the present occasion I was writing to you and going to say something about Arles as it is–and as it was in the old days of Boccaccio. Well, instead of continuing the letter I began to draw on the very paper the head of a dirty little girl I saw this afternoon whilst I was painting a view of the river with a greenish yellow sky.
Trying to match colors to cover some snow globes for decorating the house!
At another moment, if I were less impressionable, I would probably poke a good deal of fun at what seems to me to be askew and deranged in the local customs. At present, from time to time it doesn’t have a very happy effect on me. Right, well – in fact, there are so many painters who are cracked in one way or another that little by little I’ll be consoled by it.
Here we have days of sunshine and wind, I walk a lot to take the air. Up to now I’ve been sleeping and eating at the hospital. Yesterday and today I began to work.
It appears that the people around here have a legend that makes them afraid of painting and that people talked about that in the town.
There are so many moments when I feel completely normal, and actually it would seem to me that, if what I have is only a sickness peculiar to this area, I should wait quietly here until it’s over. Even if it were to happen again (which, let’s say, won’t be the case).
