W21 ¹

Auvers, c. 4 June 1890

My Dear Sister,

For many days now I have wanted to reply to your kind letter which I received while still at St. Rémy. It didn't go too well there, and I became rather worse because of the treatment. In Paris it was a great joy for me to see Theo again, and to make the acquaintance of Jo and the little one. Jo made an excellent impression of me; she is charming and very simple and brave. Yes, it seems to me that things are going as well as possible for the moment.

And as for myself, at the moment I am still afraid of the noise and the bustle of Paris, and I immediately went off into the country - to an old village.

Here there are mossy thatched roofs which are superb, and which I am certainly going to do something with.

Moreover, I think that the doctor I am recommended to will just leave me to my own devices, as if there were nothing wrong with me.

During the final days at St. Rémy I still worked in a frenzy, great bouquets of flowers, violet irises, big bouquets of roses, landscapes.

It was funny to see all my canvases again from when I started, those which I left there.

But I should very much have liked you to see the olive orchards that I have brought back with me now, with their skies of yellow, pink and blue, different enough. I think that these are canvases that have never been painted in quite this manner up until now. Up to the present the others have always painted them in grey.

I was immensely pleased to see the exhibition at the Champ de Mars, where there were a lot of things that I liked very much.

[The letter stops abruptly on the third page, which just contains the final sentence. It was obviously a rough draught for letter W 22, which contains all of the ideas above.]

1. Written in French.