I myself rather like this anecdote about Giotto—there was a competition for the execution of
some painting or other of a Virgin. Lots of proposals were sent to the fine arts authorities of those
days. One of these proposals, signed Giotto, was simply—an oval—[sketch] an egg shape—the
authorities, intrigued and trusting—entrust the Virgin in question—to Giotto. Whether it's true
or not, I don't know, but I rather like the anecdote.

However, let's return to Daumier and to your grandmother. When are you going to show us
more of them, studies of that soundness? I urge you to do so, while at the same time in no way
belittling your investigations concerning the properties of lines in contrary motion—being not at
all indifferent, I hope, to the simultaneous contrasts of lines, of forms. The trouble is, do you see,
my dear old Bernard, that Giotto, Cimabue, as well as Holbein and van Eyck, lived in an obeliscal—
if you'll pardon the expression—society, layered, architecturally constructed, in which each
individual was a stone, all of them holding together and forming a monumental society. I have
no doubt that we'll again see an incarnation of this society when the socialists logically build their
social edifice—from which they're a fair distance away yet. But you know we're in a state of total
laxity and anarchy.

We, artists in love with order and symmetry, isolate ourselves and work to define one single
thing.

Puvis knows that very well, and when he, so wise and so just, decided to descend goodnaturedly
into the intimacy of our very own epoch, forgetting his Elysian Fields, he made a
very fine portrait, the serene old man in his bright, blue interior, reading the novel with a yellow
cover—a glass of water beside him, in which a watercolor brush and a rose. And also a society lady,
like those the de Goncourts portrayed.

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

The Dutchmen, now, we see them painting things just as they are, apparently without thought,
the way Courbet painted his beautiful naked women.

They make portraits, landscapes, still lifes. One could be stupider than that and commit greater
follies.

If we do not know what to do, my dear old Bernard, then let's do the same as they, if only so as
not to allow our scarce mental powers to evaporate in sterile metaphysical meditations that aren't
up to bottling chaos, which is chaotic for the very reason that it won't fit into any glass of our caliber.

We can—and that's what those Dutchmen did, desperately clever in the eyes of people wedded
to system—we can paint an atom of chaos. A horse, a portrait, your grandmother, apples, a landscape.

Why do you say that Degas has trouble getting a hard-on? Degas lives like a little lawyer, and he
doesn't like women, knowing that if he liked them and fucked them a lot he would become cerebrally
ill and hopeless at painting. Degas's painting is virile and impersonal precisely because he has
resigned himself to being personally no more than a little lawyer, with a horror of riotous living. He
watches human animals stronger than himself getting a hard-on and fucking, and he paints them
well, precisely because he doesn't make such great claims about getting a hard-on.

Rubens, ah, there you have it, he was a handsome man and a good fucker, Courbet too;
their health allowed them to drink, eat, fuck.

In your case, my poor dear old Bernard, I already told you last spring. Eat well, do your military
drill well, don't fuck too hard; if you don't fuck too hard, your painting will be all the spunkier
for it.

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Ah, Balzac, that great and powerful artist, already told us very well that for modern artists a
certain chastity made them stronger.

The Dutchmen were married people making children, a beautiful, very beautiful occupation,
very natural.

One swallow doesn't make a summer. I'm not saying that among your new Breton studies there
aren't some virile and strong ones, but I haven't seen them yet and so wouldn't be able to talk about
them. But—I have seen those virile things, the portrait of your grandmother and the still lifes—
judging from your drawings I have vague doubts whether these new studies would have the same
vigor, just from the virile point of view.

These studies that I'm talking about first, you see it's the first swallow of your summertime as
an artist. If we want, ourselves, to get a hard-on for our work, we must sometimes resign ourselves
to fucking only a little, and for the rest to be, according as our temperament demands, soldiers or
monks. The Dutchmen, once again, had morals, and a quiet, calm, well-ordered life.

Delacroix, ah, him—"I," he said, "found painting when I had no teeth nor breath left." And
those who saw this famous artist paint said: when Delacroix paints it's like the lion devouring his
piece of flesh. He fucked only a little, and had only casual love affairs so as not to filch from the
time devoted to his work. If in this letter, on the face of it more incoherent, and taken on its own
without its connections to the previous correspondence and above all, friendship, than I should
wish—If in this letter you find that I have some anxieties—concerns in any case—for your health,
foreseeing the hard ordeal that you'll have to go through in doing your service, obligatory, alas,—
then you will read it correctly. I know that the study of the Dutchmen could only do you good,
their works being so virile and so spunky and so healthy.

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Personally, I find continence is quite good for me. It's enough for our weak, impressionable
artists' brains to give their essence to the creation of our paintings. Because in thinking, calculating,
wearing ourselves out, we expend cerebral activity.

Why exert ourselves in spending all our creative juices when those who pimp for a living
and even their simple, well-fed clients work more to the satisfaction of the genital organs of the
registered whore in this case than we do? The whore in question has my sympathy more than my
compassion.

Being exiled, a social outcast, as artists like you and I surely are, also "outcasts," she is surely
therefore our friend and sister. And finding—in this position—of outcast—the same as us—an
independence that is not without its advantages—all things considered—let's not adopt a false
position by believing we're serving her through social rehabilitation, which is in any case impractical
and would be fatal for her.

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

I have just made a portrait of a postman—or rather, two portraits even—Socratic type, no
less Socratic for being something of an alcoholic, and with a high color as a result. His wife had
just given birth, the good fellow was glowing with satisfaction. He's a fierce republican, like père
Tanguy. Goddamn, what a subject to paint à la Daumier, eh? He was getting too stiff while posing,
and that's why I painted him twice, the second time at a single sitting, on white canvas, background
blue, almost white, in the face all the broken tones: yellow, green, purples, pinks, reds, the uniform
Prussian blue trimmed with yellow.

Write to me soon if you feel like it; am very encumbered and have not yet found time for figure
sketches. Handshake

Yours,
Vincent

Cézanne is as much a respectably married man as the old Dutchmen were. If he has a good hard-on
in his work it's because he's not overly dissipated through riotous living.

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam