Lastly, he seemed to find it very natural that she was sometimes a little bit dazed, and didn’t make anything of it.

So she can do whatever she likes and doesn’t have to feel awkward about travelling or moving house.

So much the better, then. In any event it’s reassuring. Because for my part I believe what he says, and with the good care that Ma gets thanks to Wil there’s little chance of ‘contracting some disease or other’.

Wanted to let you know straightaway. It’s reassuring for me, too.  1v:2

I’m really looking forward to Antwerp now. The first thing I’ll do there will probably be to go and see Leys’s paintings in his dining room, if one can see them.1 You know, that Walk on the ramparts and the one that Bracquemond etched, The table, The servant.2

I imagine that it’ll be beautiful there in the winter, too, with snow on the docks. Obviously I’ll take a few paintings with me, and they’ll be the ones that I would otherwise have sent to you in the next few days.

A large mill on the heath in the evening,3 and a view of the village behind a row of poplars with yellow leaves,4 a still life5 and a number of drawings of figures.6

I’m at something of a stand with the work here at present. It’s freezing hard, so it’s no longer possible to work outdoors. It’s better if I just don’t use any more models as long as I’m living in this house; at any rate not until I come back. Besides, I’m saving my paint and canvas so as to have ammunition there.  1v:3

SO THE SOONER I CAN GET AWAY, THE BETTER.

I recently received a letter from Leurs about my paintings.7 He wrote that Tersteeg and Wisselingh had seen them and thought them ‘not suitable for them’.

All the same, I maintain that I’ll make people change their minds — even if Tersteeg and Wisselingh don’t want to.

I’ve just read a few books in the style of Gigoux’s Souvenirs,8 which my friend in Eindhoven9 had sent for, in which I found some very interesting things about the fellows of those days, starting with Paul Huet.10 And which give me confidence that I haven’t tackled nature the wrong way, nor the technique of painting, although I freely admit that I will and must still change.

There you have those heads that are with you, there must be good ones among them, I’m as good as certain of it.11 So — let’s go.

I don’t think this winter will be dull. It’s obvious that it’ll mainly be a question of working hard. But there’s something singular in the very idea that one has to take the plunge.

I’m taking a stock of the paint that I can easily get ground here myself12 — but it’ll help me if I can find a few more colours in a better quality there. I’m also taking at least 40 stretching frames the same size as those studies of heads that are with you.13 And drawing materials and paper so that, however I get on, I’ll always be able to do something.  1r:4

Because I’ve worked entirely alone for years, I imagine that although I will and although I can learn from others and even adopt technical things — all the same I’ll always see through my own eyes and tackle things originally.

However, nothing could be surer than that I’ll try to learn more things. And if I can — particularly the nude figure. I imagine, though, that in order to get models, as many as I want and good, I won’t be done all at once, but will have to find the money for it by making other things. Be it landscapes, be it townscapes, be it portraits, as I said — or — even if it were signboards and decoration. Or — something I didn’t mention in my last letter among the things that I could do ‘on the side’ — give lessons in painting, letting them begin by painting still lifes — which I believe is a different method from that of the drawing masters. I’ve tried it out on those friends of mine in Eindhoven,14 and I’d dare repeat it.

I’ll certainly leave immediately, as soon as I get the monthly allowance from you. And as to that, should you by chance be in a position to send it a week earlier, I’d leave a week earlier. It goes without saying, though, that I’m not counting on it. I’m glad that I went to see the museum in Amsterdam once more before this, because I’ve seen from the work since that what I saw there has been useful to me. Write soon if you have time. I wanted to tell you Van de Loo’s opinion of Ma straightaway.  2r:5

Since I’m already busy packing up my things, it goes without saying that my thoughts are more there than here.

Here I’ve just kept on ceaselessly painting in order to learn painting, to get firm ideas about colour &c., without leaving much room in my head for other things. But when I escaped to Amsterdam for a few days, I was really delighted to see paintings once again. For it’s sometimes damned hard to be entirely away from paintings and the world of painters and not to see anything by other people. Since then I’ve had quite a yearning to get back into it, at least for a while.

If one’s entirely out of it for a couple of years and wrestles with nature, that can sometimes help, and at the same time one perhaps gets a new stock of confidence and health out of it, which one can under no circumstances have too much of, though, because the painter’s life is often harsh enough.  2v:6

As regards my work, I’ll have to act according to circumstances, I mean, if I could perhaps make the acquaintance of an art buyer and persuade him to show some of my things. But tomorrow doesn’t mean never, and you’ll soon see something of it, particularly if I succeed in making new studies of heads or figures. The one landscape I’m taking with me — and possibly both — but the one with the yellow leaves: I think you’d like it too. I enclose a quick croquis of it.15

The horizon is a dark line against a light line of sky in white and blue. In this dark line little flecks of red, bluish and green or brown, forming the silhouette of the roofs and orchards, the field greenish. The sky higher up, grey, against it the black trunks and yellow leaves. Foreground completely covered with fallen yellow leaves, in which 2 little black figures and one blue. On the right a birch trunk, white and black, and a green trunk with red-brown leaves.

Regards, with a handshake.