Letter 07/11/1883 - by Vincent van Gogh

For a change I have recently done a few watercolors outside: a small wheat field and part of a potato field. And I also drew a few small landscapes, to have a setting for some figure drawings which I am planning.

These are my plans for those figure drawings, done very superficially. At the top is one of people burning weeds, with below people leaving the potato fields.

I am seriously thinking of painting a number of figure studies, mainly to raise the standard of the drawings.

Something that I would very much like to have and that I also feel that I can do, subject to certain conditions of him posing patiently, is the figure of Pa on a heathland path, the figure is drawn strongly and with character, and, as I said, a patch of brown heath with a narrow, white, sandy path through it and the sky done with some passion and lightly expressed.

Then perhaps Pa and Ma arm in arm - in autumn would also like to have Pa's figure when I do a peasant funeral, which I am actually planning to do, although I will find it very difficult. Apart from the less important differences in religious convictions, the figure of a poor village parson is to me, as a type and character, one of the most sympathetic there is, and I would not be me if I did not attempt it.