A technical question. Do give me your opinion in next letter.

I'm going to put the black and the white boldly on my palette, just the way the colorman sells
them to us, and use them as they are.

When—and note that I'm talking about the simplification of color in the Japanese manner—
when I see in a green park with pink paths a gentleman who is dressed in black, and a justice of the
peace by profession (the Arab Jew in Daudet's Tartarin calls this honorable official "shustish of the beace"), who's reading L'Intransigeant.

Above him and the park a sky of a simple cobalt.

Then why not paint the said shustish of the beace with simple bone black and L'Intransigeant
with simple, very harsh white?

Because the Japanese disregards reflection, placing his solid tints one beside the other—
characteristic lines naively marking off movements or shapes.

In another category of ideas, when you compose a color motif expressing, for example, a
yellow evening sky.

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

The harsh, hard white of a white wall against the sky can be expressed, at a pinch and in a
strange way, by harsh white and by that same white softened by a neutral tone. Because the sky
itself colors it with a delicate lilac hue. Again, in this very naive landscape, which is meant
to show us a hut, whitewashed overall (the roof, too), placed in an orange field, of course, because
the sky in the south and the blue Mediterranean produce an orange that is all the more intense
the higher in tint the range of blues.

The black note of the door, of the windowpanes, of the little cross on the rooftop creates a
simultaneous contrast of white and black just as pleasing to the eye as that of the blue
with the orange.

To take a more entertaining subject, let's imagine a woman dressed in a black and white
checked dress, in the same primitive landscape of a blue sky and an orange earth—that would
be quite amusing to see, I imagine. In fact, in Arles they often do wear white and black checks.

In short, black and white are colors too, or rather, in many cases may be considered colors, since their simultaneous contrast is as sharp as that of green and red, for example.

>© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

The Japanese use it too, by the way—they express a young girl's matte and pale complexion,
and its sharp contrast with her black hair wonderfully well with white paper and four strokes of the
pen. Not to mention their black thornbushes, studded with a thousand white flowers.

I've finally seen the Mediterranean, which you will probably cross before I do. Spent a week
in Saintes-Maries, and to get there crossed the Camargue in a diligence, with vineyards, heaths,
fields as flat as Holland. There, at Saintes-Maries, there were girls who made one think of Cimabue
and Giotto: slim, straight, a little sad and mystical. On the completely flat, sandy beach, little
green, red, blue boats, so pretty in shape and color that one thought of flowers; one man boards
them, these boats hardly go on the high sea—they dash off when there's no wind and come back to
land if there's a bit too much. It appears that Gauguin is still ill. I'm quite curious to know what
you've done lately; I'm still doing landscapes, sketch enclosed. I'd very much like to see Africa too,
but I hardly make any firm plans for the future, it will depend on circumstances. What I should like
to know is the effect of a more intense blue in the sky. Fromentin and Gérôme see the earth in
the south as colorless, and a whole lot of people saw it that way. My God, yes, if you take dry sand
in your hand and if you look at it closely. Water, too, air, too, considered this way, are colorless. No
BLUE WITHOUT YELLOW and WITHOUT ORANGE, and if you do blue, then do yellow and orange as
well, surely. Ah well, you'll tell me that I write you nothing but banalities. Handshake in thought,

Ever yours,
Vincent

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam