1r:1
Dear brother,
I’m sending you herewith a few more studies.1 And here’s an idea that I’ve been thinking about in the past few days. If you don’t find it tedious to see such sketches, I think it would be a good idea if I sent you 60 sketches, say, in a small portfolio sometime. Then you could look through them at your ease in your room. And the advantage would be that when you come, sooner or later, you would already have seen some things that I did last year. Otherwise we’d have to go through these studies very hastily if you only came for a short time.  1v:2
But if you, too, think it would be a good idea to look through them in advance, so that I should send them in the next few days, then I take it I can count on your bringing them back this summer, say, can’t I?, because I’ll have to work from them later.
My next work depends in part on the studies staying together. Anyway — it may amuse you — because some of the orphan men, for example, are perhaps rather typical. Anyway, let me know about this.  1v:3
Because I had to pay for some things at New Year I’ve now actually run out of money already, at least I have very little left. Try, if you can, to send before rather than after the tenth and I’ll be obliged to you. Adieu, old chap, I hope that the sketches will be more or less to your taste.
With a handshake.

Ever yours
Vincent

The drawings I’d like to send you are ditto figures like the lithographs, all sorts — men, women, children.2

299

Br. 1990: 300 | CL: 258
From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Date: The Hague, Friday, 5 or Saturday, 6 January 1883
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1. These studies must have been five ‘heads’; see letter 300, l. 86. The description is too vague for them to be identified.
2. It is not clear which works Van Gogh is referring to with ‘men, women’; there are too many possible candidates. However there are only three known drawings of children from this period: Girl with a shawl (F 1007 / JH 299), Girl in a pinafore (F 1685 / JH 300) and Girl with a shawl (F 1008 / JH 301).
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