Part 9 (1/2)

In the event of these studies not meeting with any appreciation, and one or the other of our friends not being able to take a fancy to any of them, please keep those that are liked and return the others together with the pictures sent in exchange for those that are retained.

There is no hurry, and when business is done by barter, it is but right and proper for both sides to try and offer only good work.

If in the morning it is sufficiently dry to be rolled up, I shall also send you a landscape containing figures unloading sand, and in addition to that the rough sketch of a picture which is full of a mature will.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

What about the gentleman so diligently engaged in art whom I found in your last letter, and who looked so like me--was he supposed to be me or somebody else? As far as the face is concerned he looks very like me; but in the first place I always smoke a pipe, and then I positively dread sitting on a thin ledge of rock overlooking the sea, for I suffer from giddiness. In the name of these presents I therefore protest most solemnly against the other resemblances I have already mentioned.{S}

The decoration of my house is absorbing me entirely, and I hope and believe that it will be very tasteful even if it be very different from everything you do.

That reminds me that on one occasion some time ago you spoke to me of certain pictures which were to represent flowers, trees, and fields, respectively. Now I have the ”Poet?'s Garden?” (two canvases), the ”Starry Night,?” the ”Vineyard,?” the ”Furrows,?” the ”View from my House,?” which might also be called ”The? Street.” As you see, without any intention on my part, a certain natural sequence seems to connect them together.

I should be very curious to see sketches of Pont-Aven; but you must send me a more finished study. You are, however, sure to do everything in the best possible way; for I am so fond of your talent that in time I shall make quite a little collection of your works. I have always been very much moved by the thought that j.a.panese artists often bartered their pictures among themselves. That does indeed show that they loved one another and were united, that a kind of harmony prevailed among them, and that they lived in brotherly concord instead of in intrigues. The more we resemble them in these things the more we shall prosper. It also appears that a few of these j.a.panese artists earned very little money and lived like simple workmen. I have the reproduction of a j.a.panese drawing (Bing?'s publication) representing a single blade of gra.s.s. What a paragon of conscientiousness it is! I shall show it to you when I get the chance.

What surprised me in your letter were your words: ”Ah, as for painting Gauguin?'s portrait--that is impossible!?” Why impossible? That?'s all nonsense. But I will not press you further. And has not Gauguin, for his part, ever thought of painting your portrait? You are a funny pair of portrait painters, I must say! You live all day long shoulder to shoulder and cannot even agree so far as to act as each other?'s models.

The end of it will be that you will part without having painted each other?'s portraits. All right, I will not urge you any more. But I hope that one day I shall be able to paint both your portrait and Gauguin?'s.

I shall do it as soon as we all come together, which is sure to happen some day.

Whereas the finest plans and calculations so often come to naught, if only one work on the off chance and take advantage of the happy accidents the day brings with it, one can accomplish a host of good and astonis.h.i.+ng things. Make a point of going to Africa for a while--you will be enraptured with the South, and it will make you a great artist.

Even Gauguin is greatly indebted to the South for his talent.{T}

For many months now I have been contemplating the strong sun of the South, and the result of this experiment is that, in my opinion, and chiefly from the standpoint of colour, Delacroix and Monticelli, who are now wrongly reckoned among the pure romanticists and the artists with fantastic imaginations, are entirely justified. Think of it, the South which Fromentin and Gerome have depicted so dryly, is even in these parts a land the intimate charm of which can be rendered only with the colours of the colourist.

In my sketch of ”The? Garden,” there may be something like _Des tapis velus--de fleurs et verdure tissus_. I wished to reply to all your quotations with the pen, even if I dispensed with words. My head does not feel very much like discussing to-day; I am head over ears in work.

I have just done two large pen-drawings, for instance, a bird?'s-eye view of an endless plain seen from the top of a hill: vineyards, and fields of stubble reaching to infinity, and extending like the surface of the sea to the horizon, which is bounded by the hills of _La Crau_. It does not look j.a.panese, and yet, truth to tell, I have never painted anything so essentially j.a.panese. A tiny figure of a labourer and a small train running through the cornfields, const.i.tute the only signs of life in the picture. Think of it! on one of my first days at this place, a painter friend of mine said to me: ”It would be absurdly tedious to paint that!?”

I did not attempt to answer, but thought the spot so beautiful that I could not even summon the strength to upbraid the idiot. I returned to the locality again and again, and made two drawings of it--this flat stretch of country which contains nothing save infinity, eternity. And then, while I was drawing, a man walked up to me--not a painter this time, but a soldier. ”Does it surprise you,?” I asked him, ”that I should think this as beautiful as the sea??” ”No, it does not surprise me in the?

least that you should think this as beautiful as the sea,” came the reply (the fellow knew the sea, by-the-bye); ”for I think it even more?

beautiful than the ocean, because it is inhabited.”

Which of the two men understood the most about art, the painter or the soldier? According to my way of thinking, the soldier did; am I not right?

I want to paint humanity, humanity and again humanity.

I love nothing better than this series of bipeds, from the smallest baby in long clothes to Socrates, from the woman with black hair and a white skin to the one with golden hair and a brick-red sun-burnt face.

Meanwhile I am painting other things.