22 October 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 >>, 22 October 1882

Sunday afternoon

My dear Theo,

I don’t need to tell you how delighted I was with your letter and the enclosure, it comes just in time and will be of tremendous help to me.

We are having autumn weather here, rainy and chillyChilly - something that makes one feel cold.
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >>, but full of atmosphere, especially splendid for figures, which stand out in tone against the wet streets and roads reflecting the sky. It is what Mauve, in particular, does so beautifully time and again. So I have been able to do some work on the large watercolour of the crowd of people in front of the lottery office [F 970, JH 222], and I have also started another one of the beach, of which this is the composition [F 982, JH 247].

I entirely agree with what you say about those times now and then when one feels dull-witted in the face of nature or when nature seems to have stopped speaking to us.

I get the same feeling quite often and it sometimes helps if I then tackle something quite different. When I feel jaded with landscapeLandscape - a picture, drawing or another work of art depicting countryside or nature.
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >> or light effects, I tackle figures, and vice versa. Sometimes there is nothing for it but to wait for it to pass, but many a time I manage to do away with the numbness by changing my subject matter.

However, I am becoming more and more fascinated by the figure. I remember there used to be a time when my feeling for landscapeLandscape - a picture, drawing or another work of art depicting countryside or nature.
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >> was very strong and I was much more impressed by a painting or drawingDrawing - is a picture made with a pencil, pen or a crayon.
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >> which captured a light effect or the atmosphere of a landscapeLandscape - a picture, drawing or another work of art depicting countryside or nature.
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >> than I was by the figure. Indeed, figure painters in general filled me with a kind of cool respect rather than with warm sympathy However, I remember very well being most impressed by a drawingDrawing - is a picture made with a pencil, pen or a crayon.
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >> of Daumier’s: an old man under the chestnut trees in the Champs Elysees (an illustration for Balzac), though the drawingDrawing - is a picture made with a pencil, pen or a crayon.
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >> was not all that important. What impressed me so much at the time was something so stout and manly in Daumier’s conception, something that made me think It must be good to think and to feel like that and to overlook or ignore a multitude of things and to concentrate on what makes us sit up and think and what touches us as human beings more directly and personally than meadows or clouds.

That is also why I always feel attracted to the figures of both the English draughtsmen and of the English writers, whose Monday-morning-like soberness and studied restraint and prose and analysis is something solid and substantial to which one can hang on in days when one feels weak. Among French writers the same is true of Balzac and Zola.

I don’t know the books by Murger you mention, but I hope to become acquainted with them soon.

Did I tell you that I was reading Daudet's Les Rois en Exil? I thought it rather good.

The titles of those books greatly appeal to me, for instance, La Boheme [he is referring to Scenes de la vie Boheme, by Henry Murger]. How far we have strayed nowadays from la boheme of Gavarni's time! It seems to me that there was definitely something warmer and more light-hearted and alive about those days than there is today. But I cannot be certain, and there is much good nowadays, or there could be much more than in fact there is if there were greater solidarity.

At the moment I can see a splendid effect out of my studio window. The city, with its towers and roofs and smoking chimneys, is outlined as a dark, sombre silhouette against a horizon of light. This light is, however, no more than a broad streak over which hangs a heavy raincloud, more concentrated below, torn above by the autumn wind into large shreds and lumps that are being chased away. But that streak of light is making the wet roofs glisten here and there in the dark mass of the city (on a drawingDrawing - is a picture made with a pencil, pen or a crayon.
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Vincent van Gogh letters dictionary >> one would achieve this with a stroke of body colour), so that although the mass has a single tone one can still distinguish between red tiles and slates. The Schenkweg runs through the foreground like a glistening streak through the wetness; the poplars have yellow leaves, the banks of the ditches and the meadows are a deep green; the little figures are black. I would have drawn it, or rather tried to draw it, if I hadn't been working hard all afternoon on figures of peat-carriers, which are still too much on my mind to allow room for anything new, and should be allowed to linger.

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