Rappard is here at the moment and sends you his regards.2 He’s made a very fine study of a girl’s head and one of a farmyard, and two small ones of ox-carts.3 And various others that he’s planning should follow.

I’m working on a figure of a shepherd wearing a greatcoat — which is the same size as the woman spinning.4

And apart from that a study of two Pollard willows with the yellow leaves of poplars behind them and a view across the fields.5  1v:2

It’s extraordinarily beautiful here at the moment with the autumnal effects. In a fortnight we’ll have the real fall of the leaves — when everything that’s on the trees falls in a few days.

If I have some luck with the shepherd, it will be a figure that will have something of the very old Brabant in it. Anyway, it isn’t finished yet, and we’ll see how it turns out.

You could have dropped me a line in reply to what I wrote to you recently — it seems to me — even if it was only because it might shake up your own ideas, perhaps. For my part — despite much old and new sorrow — I have less and less doubt about my future, both as to my work and even as to myself.  1v:3

All the same, I know that I’ll have many a struggle in both respects — that both my work and I myself will meet with resistance, will make a bad impression in many cases, but not in all.

And as to my work, I become keener on it by the day, and I’m regaining my high spirits as if I were 20.

So I must see to it that I go to Antwerp sometime — often enough in the past6 I’ve sold things that authorities declared unsaleable. If I wanted to sell something in the past then it didn’t always fall through if I really wanted someone to take this thing or that.

And perhaps you’re right that I should just find a way for my work myself, and become my own dealer. Anyway.

Regards.