You write about the Poussins in the Louvre2 — I like Poussin very much.

But what a long time ago it is — too long — since I saw those paintings.3 As to that — I need to see paintings, and I must do something about it. Precisely because I very much hope to go finding people for my own work, I think it will be good for me to go on a trip every now and then.

Longing most of all for Rembrandt and Frans Hals, one day this week I’m going to the museum in Amsterdam4 with a friend of mine in Eindhoven5 whose studies I once showed you. If I can acquire connections for my own work, I won’t fail to do so — and I firmly believe that with perseverance I’ll win.  1v:2

As for the work, I’ve been painting a lot of still lifes lately,6 as I already wrote, and I like it enormously. I’ll send you some. I know that they’re difficult to sell — but it’s devilish useful and I’ll go on doing a lot to them in the winter.

You’ll get a large still life of potatoes — where I’ve tried to get body into it — I mean express the material. Such that they become lumps that have weight and are solid, which you’d feel if they were thrown at you, for instance.7

Anyway, you’ll just have to see.

That dispute I had with the priest — I haven’t had much more bother with it.8 There’ll always be God-fearing natives in the village who’ll still believe me capable of it, though, because it’s certain that the priest would love to pin the blame for that business on me. Since I’m not to blame, though, the rumours from that quarter leave me  1v:3 completely cold. As long as they don’t get in the way of my painting I don’t take any notice of them whatsoever. I’ve remained on good terms with the peasants to whom it happened and where I went to paint a lot, and am just as welcome in their home as before.

I’m now working on still lifes of my birds’ nests, and I’ve finished 4 of them.9 I think that some people who know nature well might like them because of the colours of the moss, dry leaves and grasses, clay &c.

I’ll write to you again at the end of this week, when I’m back from the little trip to Amsterdam.

Since I have to pay my rent again next month, I can hardly afford the expense. But it’s essential. So more soon.

As for Poussin — he’s a painter who thinks and makes one think about everything — in whose paintings all reality is at the same time symbolic.10 In the work of Millet, of Lhermitte, all reality is also symbolic at the same time.

They’re something other than what people call realists.  2r:5