But this is a question of colour, and the question of the form is what matters more to me at the point where I now find myself. Expressing the form — I think — works best with an almost monochrome colour scheme, the tones of which vary chiefly in intensity and in value. For instance,
The well by Jules Breton was painted in a single colour, almost But one does have to study each colour individually in association with its opposite before one can be really sure of being harmonious.I painted a few more studies of our garden when there was snow on it.
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