1. This painting of a woman spinning – later in the letter it says that it measured 100 x 75 cm – must be the same one referred to in letter 449 (see letter 449, n. 1).
2. This painted study of a man winding yarn is not known; later in the letter Van Gogh says that it measured about 105 x 95 cm. The letter sketch that he made of it (F - / JH 498) shows that the work also bore some resemblance to the watercolour Man winding yarn (F 1140 / JH 487) and the pen-and-ink drawing Man winding yarn (F 1138 / JH 486 [2468]). It is not possible to identify the two studies Theo had seen on his visit in May.
[2468]
3. Les maîtres d’autrefois (1876) by Eugène Fromentin contains an overview of the old Dutch and Flemish masters. Fromentin, himself an artist, approaches them with an artist’s eye and goes in depth into technique, composition, the use of colour and so forth. Van Rappard had sent this book for Van Gogh to read (letters 448 and 459).
4. Regnault greatly admired Fortuny, whose work he studied in Grenada during a trip to Spain in 1868. See Lizzie W. Champney, ‘In the footsteps of Fortuny and Regnault’, The Century, Illustrated Monthly Magazine 23 (1881), pp. 15-34.
5. Van Gogh remained ignorant of Impressionism for a long time: see letter 288, n. 4.
6. Van Gogh based this remark on a passage in Fromentin’s Les maîtres d’autrefois (1876) where he argues that the moderns have abandoned Ruisdael’s view of the function of atmosphere and skies in paintings. According to Fromentin he regarded the sky as ‘the real, compact, substantial ceiling to his paintings’ (le plafond réel, compacte, consistant de ses tableaux), whereas the moderns go so far as to condemn themselves to maintaining as a principle ‘that because the air is the emptiest and most imperceptible part of the painting, there is nothing against it being the most colourless and non-existent part’ (que l’atmosphère étant la partie la plus vide et la plus insaisissable du tableau, il n’y a pas d’inconvénient à ce qu’elle en soit la partie la plus incolore et la plus nulle) Fromentin 1902, chapter 7, p. 251.
7. Van Gogh is referring to one of the paintings by Cabat that he had seen years before; L’étang de Ville-d’Avray [1750] (The pond of Ville-d’Avray) and Autumnal evening [1751] (see letters 55, n. 9 and 66, n. 6). Given the comparison with Ruisdael, he appears to mean the former work.
[1750] [1751]
8. Van Gogh may have been prompted to write this by a remark in Les maîtres d’autrefois to the effect that some people worship beauty but deny the truth: ‘denying the truth to kneel before beauty’ (en niant le vrai pour se mettre à genoux devant le beau). See Fromentin 1902, chapter 12, p. 322. Cf. also the Dutch saying: ‘De waarheid heeft een schoon geluid’ (Truth has a beautiful sound) and ‘Beauty is truth, truth is beauty’, from John Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1819).
9. This refers to a sample of paint applied just above it.
10. This is a reference to another paint sample applied below it.
11. After ‘WARM’ Van Gogh crossed out ‘de schaduwtoon’ (the shadow tone).
12. Van Gogh had read about the ‘ton rompu’ (broken tone) and the ‘ton vif’ (strong tone) and ‘les tons voisins’ (neighbouring tones) in Blanc’s essay on Delacroix in Les artistes de mon temps (see Blanc 1876, pp. 65, 69-71). Cf. also the quote cited in letter 494. The ‘ton entier’ (whole tone) is not mentioned there; Blanc writes of ‘two complementaries, of which one is pure and the other broken’ (deux complémentaires, dont l’une est pure et l’autre rompue’) (p. 66).
13. See for the ‘laws of colour’: letter 449, n. 6.
14. Dorn associates this notion with Victor Hugo’s ideas about genius in his book William Shakespeare (see Hugo 1864, pp. 233-234, and exhib. cat. Vienna 1996, pp. 33, 48 (n. 12); cf. also letter 280). In Les artistes de mon temps Blanc talked of Delacroix’s ‘genie lumineux’ (brilliant genius), of ‘Les grands génies’ (the great geniuses) and stated ‘Poëte religieux, Delacroix comprend le génie du christianisme’ (As a religious poet, Delacroix understands the genius of Christianity) (Blanc 1876, pp. 58, 75, 80).
a. Read: ‘Gebrande terra (de) sienna’ (burnt sienna), a reddish-brown earth pigment.
15. On this question Blanc says in Les artistes de mon temps: ‘Thus — when one mixes together blue and orange in equal quantities, the orange being no more orange than the blue is blue — the mixing destroys the two tones and the result is an absolutely colourless grey.’ (Ainsi, lorsqu’on mêle ensemble du bleu et de l’orangé à quantités égales, l’orangé n’étant pas plus orangé, que le bleu n’est bleu, le mélange détruit les deux tons et il en résulte un gris absolument incolore.)
Elsewhere in the book he says that, viewed from close to, ‘Velázquez is not exactly a great colourist, in the sense that he does not have the essential quality of colouring, variety. He is a gourmet who eats hardly anything other than one dish, but who wishes it to be exquisite. On his sober palette the principal tones are silver white and ivory black, and his painting, the basis of which is a delightful grey, would be almost monochrome if he did not revive it, here and there, with some light red motifs, with some touches of a pale blue.’ (Vélazquez n’est pas précisément un grand coloriste, en ce sens qu’il ne possède pas la qualité essentielle au coloris, la variété. C’est un gourmet qui ne mange guère que d’un plat, mais qui le veut exquis. Sur sa sobre palette, les principaux tons sont le blanc d’argent et le noir d’ivoire, et sa peinture, dont un gris délicieux forme la base, serait presque monochrome, s’il ne la réveillait, çà et là, par quelques accessoires d’un rouge léger, par quelques touches d’un bleu évanoui.) See Blanc 1876, pp. 65, 355.
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