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