1. It is not known which studies these are. They are heads in any case, ‘heads of the people’: see l. 67 and letter 300.
2. For Millet’s Sower [1888], see letter 156, n. 3. In ‘Salon de 1861’ E.J.T. Thoré had written about the idea that the type was the highest that could be attained, and he also linked it to The sower: ‘Millet does not have Courbet’s brilliance as a colourist; he is more monotonous, but no less precise in his sobriety. He does not seem to be preoccupied with practice, although he achieves a solidity of form that has something statuesque about it; his figures are generous, and in some way fully modelled. What preoccupies him is the essential character of the figure he is trying to create. Doing a sower, for example, he would have the ambition that it would be the sower, in general, the very type of the thing, just as in the Bible, or in Homer. And truly, he has grandeur, by dint of sheer simplicity. And yet he also lacks a certain distinction of taste, which holds him back, like Courbet, on a rung of the ladder that the great artists have climbed’. (Millet n’a pas l’éclat de Courbet comme coloriste; il est plus monotone, mais non moins juste dans sa sobriété. La pratique ne semble pas le préoccuper, quoiqu’il arrive à une solidité de formes qui tient de la statuaire; ses figures sont pleines et en quelque sorte modelées jusqu’à au fond. Ce qui le préoccupe, c’est le caractère essentiel du personnage qu’il entend créer. Faisant un semeur, par exemple, il aurait l’ambition que ce fût le Semeur en général, le type même de la chose, toujours comme dans la Bible ou dans Homère. Et vraiment, il a de la grandeur, à force de simplicité. A lui aussi cependant manque je ne sais quelle distinction de goût, ce qui l’arrête, comme Courbet, à un certain degré de l’échelle qu’ont escaladée les grands artistes). See Salons de W. Bürger, 1861 à 1868, vol. 1. Paris 1870, pp. 100-101. It is evident from letter 534 that Van Gogh had read this review.
In a letter of 15 February 1873 to Camille Lemonnier Millet said that he wanted to express the true in the type: ‘I assure you, sir, that if it were only a matter of my purpose, I would express very forcefully the type, which is, to my mind, the most potent truth. You are entirely right in attributing to me the intention of doing so’. (Je vous assure, monsieur, que, s’il n’en tenait qu’à ma volonté, j’exprimerais bien fortement le type qui est, à mon sens, la plus puissante vérité. Vous êtes bien dans le vrai en m’attribuant l’intention de le faire). Sensier 1881, p. 354.
[1888]
3. Mariano José Maria Bernardo Fortuny y Carbó, An anchorite, c. 1867 (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum). Ill. 93 [93]; Kabyle mort (The dead Kabyle) 1867 (Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet). Ill. 94 [94]. La garde du mort (Watching over the dead man) refers to Arabe veillant le corps de son ami (An Arab watching over the body of his dead friend) (1866) (Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet). Ill. 95 [95]. From 1878 Goupil published 27 etchings by Fortuny, including the three mentioned. See Cat. Goupil 1878 (Octobre), p. 2 (without dimensions). Goupil published the fourth state (26.6 x 45 cm). See Vives 1991, pp. 85-92, 133-137, cat. nos. 1, 2, 16.
[93] [94] [95]
4. Van Gogh wrote this in letter 291.
5. Mariano José Maria Bernardo Fortuny y Carbó, The choice of a model, 1866-1874 (Washington, Corcoran Gallery of Art). Also included as a photograph in the series Oeuvres de Fortuny published by Goupil, Galerie photographique (Bordeaux, Musée Goupil). Ill. 2025 [2025]. See also Eugène Montrosier, Les artistes modernes, part 1. Paris 1881, p. 36.
[2025]
6. For the issues of La Vie Moderne that Van Gogh had, cf. letter 283, n. 9.
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