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My dear Theo,
Gauguin and I thank you very much for the 100 Fr. you sent and also for your
letter.
Gauguin is very pleased that you like what he sent from Brittany, and that other
people who have seen them like them too.
Just now he has in hand some women in a vineyard, altogether from memory, but if he
does not spoil it or leave it unfinished it will be very fine and very unusual. Also a picture of the same night cafe
that I painted too.
I have done two canvases of falling leaves, which Gauguin liked, I think, and I'm
working now on a vineyard all purple and yellow. Then I have an Arlsienne at last, a figure (size 30 Canvas) slashed on
in an hour, background pale lemon, the face gray, the clothes black, deep black, with perfectly raw Prussian blue. She is
leaning on a green table and seated in an armchair of orange wood.
Gauguin has bought a chest of drawers for the house, and various household utensils, also 20 meters of
very strong canvas, and a lot of things that we needed, and that at any rate it was more convenient to have.
Only we have kept an account of all he has paid out, which comes almost to 100 francs, so that either
at the New Year or say in March we can pay him back, and then the chest of drawers etc. will naturally be
ours.
I think this is right on the whole, since he intends to put money by when he sells, till the time (say
in a year) when he has enough to risk a second voyage to Martinique. We are working hard, and our life together goes very
well. I am very glad to know that you are not alone in the flat.
These drawings by de Haan are very fine. I like them very much. Yet to do that with colour, to manage
so much expression without the help of chiaroscuro in black and white, damn it all, it is not easy and he will even
arrive at a new type of drawing if he carries out his plan of passing through impressionism at a school, considering his
new attempts in colour merely as studies. But in my opinion he is right over and over again to do all this. Only there
are several so-called impressionists who have not his knowledge of the figure, and it is just this knowledge of the
figure which will later on come again to the surface, and which he will be all the better for. I am very anxious some day
to get to know de Haan and Isacson.
If they ever came here Gauguin would certainly say to them -go to Java for impressionist work. For
Gauguin though he works hard here is still homesick for hot countries. And then it is unquestionable that if you went to
Java, for instance, with the one idea of working on colour, you would see heaps of new things. Then in those brighter
countries, with a stronger sun, direct shadow, as well as the cast shadow of objects and figures, becomes quite
different, and is so full of colour that one is tempted simply to suppress it. That happens even here. Yet I will say, no
more on the importance of painting in the tropics, I am already sure de Haan and Isacson will feel the importance of
it.
In any case, to come here some time or other would do them no harm, they would certainly find
some interesting things. Gauguin and I are going to have our dinner at home to day, and we feel as sure and certain that
it will turn out well as that it will seem to us better or cheaper.
So as not to delay this letter I will finish up for today. I hope to write again soon. Your arrangement
about money is quite right. I think you will like the fall of the leaves that I have done. It is some poplar trunks in
lilac cut by the frame where the leaves begin. These tree-trunks are lined like pillars along an avenue where to right
and left there are rows of old Roman tombs of a blue lilac. And then the soil is covered, as with a carpet, by a thick
layer of yellow and orange fallen leaves. And they are still falling like flakes of snow. And in the avenue little black
figures of lovers. The upper part of the picture is a bright green meadow, and no sky or almost none. The second canvas
is the same avenue but with an old fellow and a woman as fat and round as a ball.
But if only you had been with us on Sunday, when we saw a red vineyard, all red like red wine. In
the distance it turned to yellow, and then a green sky with the sun, the earth after the rain violet, sparkling yellow
here and there where it caught the reflection of the setting sun.
A handshake in thought from both of us, good bye for the present. I will write again as soon as I can,
and to our Dutchmen too.
Ever yours, Vincent
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