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.
Tag: the future
Filtering: Posts by Van GoghTagged with the-future
ResetThe air here is definitely doing me good, I could wish you deep lungfuls of it. One of its effects is quite funny, one small glass of cognac goes to my head down here, so without having recourse to stimulants to get my blood circulating, my constitution won’t be taxed so much all the same. But I’ve had a terribly weak stomach since I’ve been here, well, that’s probably a matter of a lot of patience. I hope to make real progress this year, which I really need to do too.
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.
And here I am, going back to my figure of the Berceuse for the 5th time. And when you see it you’ll agree with me that it’s nothing but a chromolithograph from a penny bazaar, and what’s more, it doesn’t even have the merit of being photographically correct in the proportions or in anything. But anyway, I’m trying to make an image such as a sailor who couldn’t paint would imagine it when he was in the middle of the sea and thought of a woman on land.
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.
The weather today has been magnificent with no wind, and I wanted so much to work that I’m astonished by it, as I hadn’t expected it any more.
Ah well, as for the little yellow house, when I paid my rent the landlord’s agent was very nice and behaved like an Arlesian, treating me as an equal.
When I came out of the hospital with good Roulin I fancied that I hadn’t had anything, only afterwards did I have the feeling that I’d been ill. What can you say, I have moments when I’m twisted by enthusiasm or madness or prophecy like a Greek oracle on her tripod.
Everyone here is good towards me, the neighbors & c., good and attentive as in one’s native country.
As it’s still winter, listen. Let me quietly continue my work, if it’s that of a madman, well, too bad. Then I can’t do anything about it. However, the unbearable hallucinations have stopped for now, reducing themselves to a simple nightmare on account of taking potassium bromide, I think.
Yesterday Roulin left. It was touching to see him with his children on the last day, above all with the very little one when he made her laugh and bounce on his knees and sang for her. His voice had a strangely pure, moved timbre which to my ear contained a sweet, distressed wet-nurse’s song and something like a distant echo of the clarion of revolutionary France. He wasn’t sad, though, on the contrary, he had put on his brand-new uniform, which he’d received the same day, and everyone was making much of him.
What wouldn’t I have given to be able to spend a day here with you and to show you the work in progress and the house.