Relevant paintings: "Les Peiroulets Ravine," Vincent van Gogh [Enlarge]
"Les Peiroulets Ravine," Vincent van Gogh [Enlarge]
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My dear brother,
As M. Peyron returned today, I have read your kind letters,
and also the letters from home, and that has done me an
enormous amount of good in giving me back a little energy, or
rather a little desire to climb again out of the present state
of prostration I am in. Thank you very much for the etchings -
you have chosen just the ones I have liked for a long time now,
the “David,” the “Lazarus,” the
“Samaritan Woman” and the big etching of the
“Wounded,” you have added to them the “Blind
Man” and the other very little etching, the last one, so
mysterious that I am afraid of it and do not wish to know what
it is: I did not know it, the little “Goldsmith.”
But the “Lazarus”! Early this morning I looked at
it and I remembered not only what Charles Blanc said of it, but
in fact even everything he didn't say. The unfortunate thing
about it is that these loafers here are too curious and too
ignorant of painting for me to practice my profession. The one
thing we can always claim is that you and I did make an attempt
here in the same direction as some others, who were understood
no better and whose hearts were broken by circumstances.
If ever you go to Montpellier, you will see that what I say
here is true.
Now you propose, and I accept, a return to the North instead.
I have led too hard a life to die of it or to lose the power
to work.
So Gauguin and Guillaumin, both of them, want to exchange
something for the landscape of the Alps. Well, there are two of
them, only I think that the one done last, which I have just
sent you, is done with more decision and is truer in
expression. I am perhaps going to try to work from Rembrandt, I
have especially an idea for doing the “Man at
Prayer,” in the scale of colour from light yellow to
violet.
Enclosed is Gauguin's letter, do what you think best about the
exchange, take what you like yourself, I am sure that more and
more our taste is becoming the same. Oh, if I could have worked
without this accursed disease - what things I might have done,
isolated from others, following what the country said to me.
But there, this journey is over and done with.
Ever yours, Vincent
At this time, Vincent was 37 year oldSource: Vincent van Gogh. Letter to Theo van Gogh. Written 2 May 1890 in Saint-Rémy. Translated by Mrs. Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, edited by Robert Harrison, number 630. URL: https://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/20/630.htm.
This letter may be freely used, in accordance with the terms of this site.
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