Letter 10/15/1881 - by Vincent van Gogh

My dear Theo,

It gave me a great deal of pleasure to receive your letter just now, and because I was intending to write to you anyway one of these days, I'm doing it now straightaway, in response to your letter.

I think it's wonderful that you've sent the Ingres paper, I still have some, but no more of that particular colour.

That Mr Tersteeg said what he said to you about my drawings pleases me,1 as does, certainly no less so, your finding progress in the sketches I sent. If it's beginning to manifest itself, I most certainly hope to work to the utmost, so that neither you nor Mr Tersteeg will have to retract that rather favourable opinion. I'll do my best not to betray you in this. Nature always begins by resisting the draughtsman, but he who truly takes it seriously doesn't let himself be deterred by that resistance, on the contrary, it's one more stimulus to go on fighting, and at bottom nature and an honest draughtsman see eye to eye. Nature is most certainly 'intangible' though, yet one must seize it, and with a firm hand.3 And now, after spending some time wrestling and struggling with nature, it's starting to become a bit more yielding and submissive, not that I'm there yet, no one is less inclined to think so than I, but things are beginning to go more smoothly. The struggle with nature sometimes resembles what Shakespeare calls 'Taming the shrew' (i.e. to conquer the opposition through perseverance, willy-nilly). In many things, but more particularly in drawing, I think that delving deeply into something is better than letting it go.

I feel more and more as time goes on that figure drawing in particular is good, that it also works indirectly to the good of landscape drawing. If one draws a pollard willow as though it were a living being, which it actually is, then the surroundings follow more or less naturally, if only one has focused all one's attention on that one tree and hasn't rested until there was some life in it. Herewith a couple of sketches, I'm rather busy in Leurseweg these days. Also work now and then with watercolour and sepia, but that isn't immediately successful.

Mauve has gone to Drenthe, have agreed that I'll go to him as soon as he writes to me, but perhaps he'll be coming to Princenhage again for a day. I went to see the Fabritius in Rotterdam on my last journey, and I'm glad that you've seen that Mesdag drawing, among other things. If the drawing by Mrs Mesdag which you wrote about is yellow roses on moss-covered ground, then I saw it at the exhibition and indeed, it's very beautiful and very artistic.

What you say about De Bock I find true in every respect, it's also what I think about him, but I had never succeeded in expressing it as you did in your letter.

If he were willing and able to concentrate, he'd be a better artist than he is now, to be sure. I told him frankly: De Bock, if you and I were to concentrate on figure drawing for a whole year, afterwards we'd both be completely different people from what we are now; if we fail to get a grip on ourselves and simply go on without learning anything new, we won't even remain what we are but, standing still, we'll go backwards. If we don't draw figures, or else trees as though they were figures, then we're like people who have no spine, or at least one that's too weak. Millet and Corot, whom we both like so much, could they paint a figure or couldn't they? I mean, those Masters balked at nothing. And he admitted that I was largely right. For that matter, I believe he has worked very seriously on that Panorama and that, too, will generally have a good influence on him, even if he doesn't want to admit it himself. He told me the nicest thing about that Panorama, which caused me to feel a great deal of sympathy for him. Surely you know the painter Destr�e. He had gone up to De Bock with a very pedantic air and had said to him, very superciliously, of course, and yet in a mealy-mouthed and unbearably patronizing way: De Bock, they also asked me to paint that panorama but I thought, since it was so unartistic, that I had to refuse. To which De Bock replied: My dear Mr Destr�e, what is easier, painting a panorama or refusing to paint a panorama? What is more artistic, doing it or not doing it? I don't know whether those were his exact words, but the reply was most certainly in this vein, and I found it very much to the point. And I have just as much respect for it as I do for your behaviour towards the older and wiser members of your club, whom you've left to the devices of their own seniority and wisdom while you pressed ahead with matters in a somewhat more youthful and energetic way. That is true philosophy, which makes us act like De Bock and you did on those respective occasions. One can say of such philosophy that it's also practical, just as Mauve says, 'colour is also drawing'. My paper is full, so I'll finish and go out, accept my hearty thanks for your energetic support, and a handshake in thought, and believe me.

Ever yours,

Vincent