MORE LETTERS TO HIS BROTHER
MORE LETTERS TO HIS BROTHER
DURING the journey I thought just as often of you as of the new country through which I was travelling, and I said to myself, that later on you would perhaps come here frequently. It seems to me almost impossible to work in Paris, if one has not got at least a haven of refuge, where one can rest and recover one's calm and one's self-reliance. Otherwise one must become quite stupefied.
Before I reached Tarascon I saw a beautiful landscape: mighty yellow rocks with remarkably complicated lines and imposing forms; in the narrow coves between them there were a number of small round trees standing in rows, and to judge from their grey-green foliage they must have been lemon trees.
Here in Arles the ground is a magnificent red colour and is planted with vineyards. The background of the hills is of a delicate mauve, and many a stretch of the country lying under the snow, together with the white peaks, against a sky as luminous as the snow itself, looked like the winter landscape of the Japanese.
For the present I do not find living as inexpensive here as I hoped it would be; but-I have finished three studies-a feat which would probably have been impossible in Paris just now.
As for the Impressionists, I should think it right and proper if they were introduced into England if not directly through you, at least through your agent.
It seems to me as if my blood were beginning to circulate a little more actively. As this was not the case during the latter part of my time in Paris, I literally could not hold out any longer.
I was hoping to be able to paint a beautiful blue, and I do not yet despair of doing so; for in Marseilles one ought surely to be able to obtain the raw materials first hand. I should like to procure the sort of blue that Ziem paints, which is stronger and more decided than that of other painters.
The studies I now have are: "An Old Woman of Arles," "A Snow Landscape," "A Piece of the Street with a Pork-Butcher's Shop." The women here are really beautiful. I say this in all sincerity. On the other hand, the Arles Museum is appalling, and it is such a piece of humbug that it would be much more at home in Tarascon. I have also seen a museum of antiquities-the latter were genuine.
