Wanted to tell you that Verlat has seen my work at last, and when he saw the two landscapes and the still life that I brought with me from the country,1 he said — ‘yes, but that doesn’t concern me’ — when I showed him the two portraits,2 he said — that’s different, if it’s the figure you can come. So I’m going to begin tomorrow by starting work in the painting class at the academy.3 While I’ve moreover arranged with Vinck (a pupil of Leys’s by whom I saw things in the manner of Leys, medieval) to draw some plaster casts in the evening.4

I don’t think I can go wrong with either of these two things — and I can probably learn something there that could be useful to me, be it for painting, be it for drawing. And in any event it’s an attempt to get to know people. I saw in passing that there are several people of my age working in the painting class and in the drawing class. And certainly if I were to become a little friendly with Verlat or Vinck or whomever, it would save me money for models. Anyway — that’s mainly the practical side of the matter. 1v:2

One is a matter of making two portraits of a couple of very pretty girls — types with very dark eyes, dark hair — two sisters who, I imagine, are being kept.5

And the other is a portrait of a married woman. But I tell you, nothing is settled yet and it could fall through.

But, when you think that I’ll have to go and work either there or elsewhere at someone’s home etc., I’ll have to do something about my clothes, because I’ve been wearing mine for two years and they’ve suffered, particularly recently. If it were just a 40-franc suit, say, it would be good enough.

And if Verlat says that I have to purchase some painting gear or other, I also have to be prepared to do that too. 1v:3

Accordingly. Try, as I asked you, to send 50 francs, then I can get by till the end of the month and would buy myself a new pair of trousers and waistcoat at once, and the jacket in February.

It’s dreadfully cold here, and I often feel far from well, but anyway, as long as the painting’s going, that doesn’t really matter.

I’ve already drawn there 2 evenings, and I have to say that that I think it’s very good to draw plaster casts, particularly for doing peasant figures, for instance, but not, please, as it’s usually done! I actually find all the drawings I see there hopelessly bad — and fundamentally wrong. And I know that mine are totally different — time will just have to tell who’s right. Damn it, not one of them has any feeling for what a classical statue is.

I, who haven’t seen a good cast of a classical piece for years — and the ones they have here are very fine — and who have always had live models in front of me in those years — I’m astounded by 1r:4 the ancients’ immense knowledge and aptness of sentiment now that I really see it again.6 Anyway. All the same, it’s to be expected that the academic gentlemen will accuse me of heresy, but — so be it.

I’d like to make some progress with Verlat if I could. I find much of what he does both hard and wrong in colour, and — paint — but I know that he also has his good days. That, for instance, he paints a better portrait than most of the others. And so we’ll see. I continue to feel cheerful in spite of everything, precisely because it does me good to be in all sorts of circumstances so unlike the country, and it could well be that I found myself at home here.

Anyway. But do your best to write to me soon, and it’s really necessary that I have that extra 50 francs for the month. I won’t manage otherwise, and things are too urgent.