3 September 1882, The Hague. Vincent van Gogh

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The HagueThe Hague (Dutch: Den Haag). The Hague is one of the largest cities in the Netherlands and it is the capital of South Holland province. It is also one of the five constituent parts of the Randstad metropolitan area - the other being ...
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >>, 3 September 1882
Sunday morning

My dear Theo,

I have just received your very welcome letter, and as am taking some rest today, I am answering it at once.

Thank you very much for it and for the enclosure, and for the various things you say in it.

And many thanks for your description of that scene with the workmen at Montmartre, which I found very interesting because you convey the colours so well that I can see them. I am glad you are reading the book on Gavarni. I found it very interesting, and it made me love G. twice as much.

Paris and its environs may be beautiful, but we have no complaints here either.

This week I did a painting that I think would remind you a little of ScheveningenScheveningen is one of the 8 districts and 9 subdistricts of The Hague, lying on the seashore. It was first mentioned on official documents in 1280 - then it was mainly a fishing place. Nowadays it is a seaside resort with all the necessary attributes: a beach, a pier, a lighthouse and even a section for naturists, or - more common denotation - nudists.
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >> as we saw it when we walked there together: A large study of sand, sea and sky – a big sky of delicate grey and warm white, with a single small patch of soft blue shimmering through – the sand and the sea light, so that the whole becomes golden, but animated by the boldly and distinctively coloured figures and fishing smacks, which tend to set the tonal values.

The subject of the sketch I made of it is a fishing smack weighing anchor. The horses stand ready for hitching up before pulling the smack into the sea. I am enclosing a little sketch of it.

It was really hard to do. I just wish I’d painted it on a panel or on canvas. I tried to get more colour into it, that is, depth, strength of colour.

How strange it is that you and I so often seem to have the same thoughts. Yesterday evening, for instance, I came home from the woods with a study, having been deeply preoccupied with the question of depth of colour the whole week, and particularly at that moment. And I should very much have liked to have talked to you about it, especially with reference to the study I had done – and lo and behold, in this morning’s letter you chance to mention that you were struck by the very vivid, yet harmonious, colours of Montmartre. I don’t know if it was precisely the same thing that struck the two of us, but I do know that you would most certainly have been affected by what struck me so particularly and would probably have seen it in the same light.

As a start, I am sending you a little sketch of the subject and I shall tell you what the problem was. The woods are becoming thoroughly autumnal, and there are colourful effects I don’t often see in DutchDutch. The adjective "Dutch" refers to everything connected to the Netherlands, its people, language or culture. The noun "Dutch" refers either to people inhabiting or originating from the Netherlands, or to the main language of the Netherlands...
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >> paintings.

Yesterday evening I was working on a slightly rising woodland slope covered with dry and mouldering beech leaves [F 008, JH 182]. The ground was light and dark reddish brown, emphasized by the weaker and stronger shadows of trees casting half-obliterated stripes across it. The problem, and I found it a very difficult one, was to get the depth of colour, the enormous power and solidity of that ground – and yet it was only while painting it that I noticed how much light there was still in the dusk – to retain the light as well as the glow, and depth of that rich colour, for there is no carpet imaginable as splendid as that deep brownish-red in the glow of an autumn evening sun, however toned down by the trees.

Young beech trees spring from the ground, catching the light to one side, where they are a brilliant green, and the shadowy side of the trunks is a warm, intense black-green.

Behind those saplings, behind that brownish-red ground, is a sky of a very delicate, blue-grey. Warm, hardly blue at all, sparkling. And against it there is a hazy border of greenness and a network of saplings and yellowish leaves. A few figures of wood gatherers are foraging about, dark masses of mysterious shadows. The white capConstant Aime Marie Cap (1842 - 1915) - a Belgian painter. Among his works are: "The Young Critics" (1881), "Indiscretion" (1895), "Mother's Birthday" (1885).
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >> of a woman bending down to pick up a dry branch stands out suddenly against the deep reddish-brown of the ground. A skirt catches the light, a shadow is cast, the dark silhouette of a man appears above the wooded slope.

A white bonnet, a capConstant Aime Marie Cap (1842 - 1915) - a Belgian painter. Among his works are: "The Young Critics" (1881), "Indiscretion" (1895), "Mother's Birthday" (1885).
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >>, a shoulder, the bust of a woman show up against the sky. These figures, which are large and full of poetry, appear in the twilight of that deep shadowy tone like enormous clay figurines taking shaped in a studio.

I am describing nature to you – I’m not sure to what extent I reproduced it in my sketch, but I do know that I was struck by the harmony of green, red, black, yellow, blue, brown, grey. It was very de Groux-like, an effect like, say, that sketch of “The Conscript's Departure” formerly in the Palais Ducal.

It was a hard job painting it. The ground used up one and a half large tubes of white – even though the ground is very dark – and for the rest red, yellow, brown, ochre, black, sienna, bistre, and the result is a reddish-brown, but one ranging from bistre to deep wine-red and to a pale, golden ruddiness. Then there are still the mosses and a border of fresh grass, which catches the light and glitters brightly, and is very difficult to capture. So there in the end you have it, a sketch that I maintain has some significance, something to tell, no matter what may be said about it.

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