I don’t believe that this question of the Dutchmen,1 which we’re discussing these days, is without interest. It’s quite interesting to consult them when it’s a matter of any kind of virility, originality, naturalism.

In the first place, I must speak to you again about yourself, about two still lifes that you’ve done,2 and about the two portraits of your grandmother.3 Have you ever done better, have you ever been more yourself, and someone?4 Not in my opinion. Profound study of the first thing to come to hand, of the first person to come along, was enough to really create something. Do you know what made me like these 3 or 4 studies so much? That je ne sais quoi of something deliberate, very wise, that je ne sais quoi of something steady and firm and sure of oneself, which they show. You’ve never been closer to Rembrandt, my dear chap, than then. In Rembrandt’s studio, the incomparable sphinx, Vermeer of Delft,5 found this extremely sound technique that hasn’t been surpassed. Which today..... we’re burning... to find. Oh, I know that we’re working and arguing Colour as they did chiaroscuro, value.

What do these differences matter when in the end it’s a question of expressing oneself powerfully?

At present...... you’re examining primitive Italian and German techniques, the symbolic meaning that the Italians’ abstract and mystical drawing may contain. Do so.6  1v:2

I myself rather like this anecdote about Giotto — there was a competition for the execution of some painting or other of a Virgin. Lots of proposals were sent to the fine arts authorities of those days. One of these proposals, signed Giotto, was simply — an oval —

However, let’s return to Daumier and to your grandmother. When are you going to show us more of them, studies of that soundness? I urge you to do so, while at the same time in no way belittling your investigations concerning the properties of lines in contrary motion — being not at all indifferent, I hope, to the simultaneous contrasts of lines, of forms.8 The trouble is, do you see, my dear old Bernard, that Giotto, Cimabue, as well as Holbein and Van Eyck, lived in an obeliscal — if you’ll pardon the expression — society, layered, architecturally constructed, in which each individual was a stone, all of them holding together and forming a monumental society. I have no doubt that we’ll again see an incarnation of this society when the socialists logically build their social edifice9 — from which they’re a fair distance away yet. But you know we’re in a state of total laxity and anarchy.

We, artists in love with order and symmetry, isolate ourselves and work to define one single thing.

Puvis knows that very well, and when he, so wise and so just, decided to descend good-naturedly into the intimacy of our very own epoch, forgetting his Elysian Fields, he made a very fine portrait, the serene old man in his bright, blue interior, reading the novel with a yellow cover — a glass of water beside him, in which a watercolour brush and a rose. And also a society lady, like those the De Goncourts portrayed.10  1v:3

The Dutchmen, now, we see them painting things just as they are, apparently without thought, the way Courbet painted his beautiful naked women.

They make portraits, landscapes, still lifes. One could be stupider than that and commit greater follies.

If we don’t know what to do, my dear old Bernard, then let’s do the same as them, if only so as not to allow our scarce mental powers to evaporate in sterile metaphysical meditations that aren’t up to bottling chaos, which is chaotic for the very reason that it won’t fit into any glass of our calibre.

We can — and that’s what those Dutchmen did, desperately clever in the eyes of people wedded to system — we can paint an atom of chaos. A horse, a portrait, your grandmother, apples, a landscape.

Why do you say that Degas has trouble getting a hard-on? Degas lives like a little lawyer, and he doesn’t like women, knowing that if he liked them and fucked them a lot he would become cerebrally ill and hopeless at painting. Degas’s painting is virile and impersonal precisely because he has resigned himself to being personally no more than a little lawyer, with a horror of riotous living. He watches human animals stronger than himself getting a hard-on and fucking, and he paints them well, precisely because he doesn’t make such great claims about getting a hard-on.11

Rubens, ah, there you have it, he was a handsome man and a good fucker,12 Courbet too;13 their health allowed them to drink, eat, fuck.

The Dutchmen were married people making children, a beautiful, very beautiful occupation, very natural.

One swallow doesn’t make a summer. I’m not saying that among your new Breton studies there aren’t some virile and strong ones, but I haven’t seen them yet and so wouldn’t be able to talk about them. But — I’ve seen those virile things, the portrait of your grandmother and the still lifes — judging from your drawings I have vague doubts whether these new studies would have the same vigour, just from the virile point of view.16

These studies that I’m talking about first, you see it’s the first swallow of your summertime as an artist. If we want, ourselves, to get a hard-on for our work, we must sometimes resign ourselves to fucking only a little, and for the rest to be, according as our temperament demands, soldiers or monks. The Dutchmen, once again, had morals, and a quiet, calm, well-ordered life.

Delacroix, ah, him — ‘I,’ he said, ‘found painting when I had no teeth nor breath left’.17 And those who saw this famous artist paint said: when Delacroix paints it’s like the lion devouring his piece of flesh.18 He fucked only a little, and had only casual love affairs so as not to filch from the time devoted to his work. If in this letter, on the face of it more incoherent, and taken on its own without its connections to the previous correspondence and above all, friendship, than I should wish — if in this letter you find that I have some anxieties — concerns in any case — for your health, foreseeing the hard ordeal that you’ll have to go through in doing your service, obligatory, alas, — then you will read it correctly. I know that the study of the Dutchmen could only do you good, their works being so virile and so spunky and so healthy.  2r:5

Personally, I find continence is quite good for me. It’s enough for our weak, impressionable artists’ brains to give their essence to the creation of our paintings. Because in thinking, calculating, wearing ourselves out, we expend cerebral activity.

Why exert ourselves in spending all our creative juices when those who pimp for a living and even their simple, well-fed clients work more to the satisfaction of the genital organs of the registered whore19 in this case than we do? The whore in question has my sympathy more than my compassion.

Being exiled, a social outcast, as artists like you and I surely are, ‘outcasts’ too, she is surely therefore our friend and sister. And finding — in this position — of outcast — the same as us — an independence that isn’t without its advantages — all things considered — let’s not adopt a false position by believing we’re serving her through social rehabilitation, which is in any case impractical and would be fatal for her.  2v:6

I’ve just made a portrait of a postman — or rather, two portraits even — Socratic type, no less Socratic for being something of an alcoholic, and with a high colour as a result.20 His wife had just given birth, the good fellow was glowing with satisfaction. He’s a fierce republican, like père Tanguy. Goddamn, what a subject to paint à la Daumier, eh? He was getting too stiff while posing, and that’s why I painted him twice, the second time at a single sitting, on white canvas, background blue, almost white, in the face all the broken tones: yellow, green, purples, pinks, reds, the uniform Prussian blue trimmed with yellow.

Write to me soon if you feel like it; am very encumbered and haven’t yet found time for figure sketches. Handshake.