Ah, how I wish that you’d seen the portrait of Bruyas by Delacroix and the whole museum at Montpellier where Gauguin took me. How people have already worked in the south before us! In truth, it’s quite difficult for me to believe that we’ve gone so far astray as that. As to it being a hot country — my word, I can’t help but think of a certain country Voltaire speaks of — and without even counting the simple castles in the air. Those are the thoughts that come to me as I return home.
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Yesterday Gauguin and I went to Montpellier to see the museum there, and especially the Bruyas room—there are many portraits of Bruyas, by Delacroix, by Ricard, by Courbet, by Cabanel, by Couture, by Verdier, by Tassaert, by others too. After that there are paintings by Delacroix, Courbet, Giotto, Paul Potter, Botticelli, T. Rousseau, very fine.
Bruyas was a benefactor to artists, and this is all I’ll say to you: in the Delacroix portrait, he’s a gentleman with a beard, red hair, who looks damnably like you or me, and who made me think of that poem by Musset... everywhere I touched the earth, an unfortunate man dressed in black came to sit beside us, a man who looked at us like a brother. It would have the same effect on you, I’m sure.
