The landscape has changed greatly since then — we now have magnificent evening skies of lilac and gold, above the tonal silhouettes of the houses between the masses of the coppices, which are a ruddy colour, above which rise slender black poplars — while the foregrounds are blanched and bleached green, varied by strips of black earth and dry, pale reeds along the sides of the ditches. I see all that, too — I find it as superb as anyone else — but what interests me even more is the proportion of a figure, the division of the oval of a head, and I have no grasp on the rest until I have more mastery of the figure. In short — the figure first — for my part, I can’t understand the rest without it, and it’s the figure that creates the mood. I can understand, though, that there are people like Daubigny and Harpignies and Ruisdael and so many others, who are absolutely and irresistibly carried away by the landscape itself; their work is totally satisfying because they themselves were satisfied by sky and soil and a pool of water and a bush. However, I think what Israëls said about a Dupré is a mighty clever saying — it’s just like a painting of a figure.11
Regards, and thanks again for the illustrations.
Yours truly,
Vincent
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483
Br. 1990: 487 | CL: 394
From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Date: Nuenen, between about Thursday, 5 and about Thursday, 26 February 1885
more...
Charles Paul Renouard - The industrial crisis in Lyon – Out of work
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - The sacred grove, dear to the arts and the muses
Henri Joseph Harpignies - Moonrise: The pond at Grand-Rue (Yonne)
François Nicolas Auguste Feyen-Perrin - Armorica
François Nicolas Auguste Feyen-Perrin - The bath
Emile Lévy - Girl in a Japanese robe
Pierre Marie Beyle - Women burning seaweed
Louis Joseph Raphael Collin - Summer
Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton - The spring (Goupil photograph)
Vincent van Gogh - The parsonage garden in the snow (F 194 / JH 603)