1r:1
My dear Theo,
Just wanted to tell you that Rappard has been here for 10 days or so, and sends you his regards.
As you can imagine, we’ve made several trips together to the weavers and all sorts of fine things outdoors. He was very taken with the scenery here, which is also beginning to appeal to me more and more.
Since he brought the pen drawings with him, I can send them to you now.1
Since I made them — even though that’s a relatively short time ago — I’ve got a little out of that way of doing it.
I’ve done nothing but paint recently.
And I’m curious as to whether you’ll see anything in it when you come.
Last winter you wrote to me that you found passages here and there in my watercolours of that time which satisfied you more than before in terms of colour and tone.2 And then you said something  1v:2 like ‘if you kept that up’.
You’ll see that I’ll very definitely keep it up, and that what was in those watercolours has been strengthened quite a lot in what I’ve painted since.
I’ve just now made a figure of a weaver standing in front of a loom, and one sees the machine behind him.3
And I’m working on a landscape of the pond at the bottom of our garden.4
Rappard has made a small weaver here, which I thought very good, and a bust of a girl winding yarn.5 While he was here I made another Weaver’s cottage by night,6 again in the style of those Drenthe huts.7
Rappard is going to make a large painting of the fish market in Utrecht, with many figures.8
I hope I’ll still be able to show you some things of his if you do come this summer. For he’s promised  1v:3 to send me some of his work once in a while, as I’ll also send him mine, so that we can each have some idea of what the other is doing.
I’m very pleased with the new studio; it’s roomier and good and dry.
I hope to hear from you soon, I’ve had rather a lot of expenses because of the new studio.
But of course it helps me a great deal that I don’t have to pay for my board, otherwise I would not be able to paint as much as I’ve been able to do recently. And I believe you’ll see, when you come, that because this is now more possible for me it has also helped me to progress. R. thought so, anyway, with whom I don’t want to change places at the moment where colour is concerned.
Regards, write soon, and believe me, with a handshake

Yours truly,
Vincent

 1r:4
The Weaver drawing is the drawing of a machine after the painting I’m working on.9 As well as the machinery, though, it also has a little of the forces, and the light and shade of the loom &c. But please don’t think that this is the general effect in the painting. For the painting isn’t so dry.

447

Br. 1990: 450 | CL: 369
From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Date: Nuenen, on or about Wednesday, 28 May 1884
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1. See for the twelve drawings by Van Gogh that Van Rappard had at this time: letter 441.
2. These were the watercolours he had sent, referred to in letter 429.
a. Means: ‘onlangs’ (recently).
3. Probably Weaver standing in front of his loom (F 33 / JH 489 [2470]). Later on, Van Gogh had this photographed; see letters 463 and 465.
[2470]
4. This painting of the pond at the bottom of the parsonage garden is not known.
5. Anthon van Rappard, Weaver (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum). Ill. 335 [335]. See Van Gogh Museum Journal 1997-1998. Amsterdam 1998, pp. 119-120.
No ‘bust’ of a girl winding yarn is known; however the Woman spooling yarn, Nuenen (Utrecht, Centraal Museum), which is probably related, does date from this period. Ill. 327 [327]. See exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1974, p. 87, cat. no. 109.
[335] [327]
6. This is probably Cottage (F 93 / JH 805 [2518]). See Tellegen-Hoogendoorn 2001, pp. 161-162.
[2518]
7. With the plural ‘Drenthe huts’ Van Gogh may be referring to Cottages (F 17 / JH 395 [2446]), which could possibly have been part of a batch sent to Theo (see letter 406, n. 6).
[2446]
8. This painting of a fish market is not known (cf. letter 454).
9. This must be the drawing ‘Weefstoel met wever’ (Loom with weaver), which was still with Van Rappard (cf. 437, n. 1). If that was Weaver (F 1124 / JH 456), it means Van Gogh was still working on Weaver and a spinning wheel (F 29 / JH 471 [2462]).
[2462]