of a pimp and a whore who were making up after a quarrel. The woman was pretending to
be indifferent and haughty, the man was tender. I started to paint it for you from memory—on a
little no. 4 or no. 6 canvas—now if you're leaving soon—I'll send it to you in Paris; if you're staying
longer, say so, I'll send it to you in Pont-Aven. I couldn't add it to the consignment, it was nowhere
near dry enough.

But I don't want to sign this study, because I never work from memory—there will be color in
it, which will suit you, but to repeat, here I'm doing a study for you that I would prefer not to do.
I mercilessly destroyed an important canvas—a Christ with the angel in Gethsemane—as well as
another one depicting the poet with a starry sky—because the form hadn't been studied from the
model beforehand, necessary in such cases—despite the fact that the color was right.

If the study I'm sending you in exchange doesn't suit you, just look at it a little longer.

I had the devil's own job to do it with an irritating mistral (like the study in red and green, as
well). Well, despite the fact that it wasn't painted as fluently as the old mill—it's more delicate
and more intimate. You see that all of this is perhaps not at all—impressionist—well, too bad, I
can't do anything about it—but I do what I do with an abandonment to reality, without thinking
about this or that. Goes without saying that if you preferred another study from the batch to the
men unloading sand, you could take it and remove my dedication if someone else wants it. But I
believe that that one will suit you once you've looked at it a little longer.

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

If Laval, Moret and the other one agree to make exchanges with me, perfect, but on my side I
would be especially satisfied if they wanted to do their portraits for me.

You know, Bernard, it always seems to me that if I want to do studies of brothels, I'd need more
money than I have; I'm not young or womanizer enough for them to pose for me for free. And
I can't work without a model. I'm not saying that I don't flatly turn my back on reality to turn a
study into a painting—by arranging the color, by enlarging, by simplifying—but I have such a fear
of separating myself from what's possible and what's right as far as form is concerned.

Later, after another ten years of studies, I'm not saying so, but in very truth I have so much
curiosity for what's possible and what really exists that I have so little desire or courage to search
for the ideal, in so far as it could result from my abstract studies.

Others may have more clarity of mind than I for abstract studies—and you might certainly be
among them, as well as Gauguin and perhaps myself when I'm old.

But in the meantime I'm still living off the real world. I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes
to the subject, but still I don't invent the whole of the painting; on the contrary, I find it readymade—
but to be untangled—in the real world.

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

But you'll probably find these studies ugly, I don't know. In any case, neither you nor anyone
else should do an exchange grudgingly.

My brother writes that Anquetin's back in Paris; I'm curious to know what he's made. When
you see him you'll give him my kind regards.

The house will seem more lived in now that I'll see the portraits in it.

How happy I would be to see you there yourself this winter; it's true that the trip costs rather
a lot. Nevertheless, may one not risk those expenses by taking one's revenge by working? Work's so
difficult in the north in winter. Here too, perhaps; I've hardly had the experience yet and it remains
to be seen.

But it's damned useful to see the south, where life is lived more in the open air, in order to
understand the Japanese better.

And that touch of the haughty and the noble that certain places have down here will suit your
book very well. In The Red Sunset, the sun should be imagined higher, outside the painting, let's
say just at the level of the FRAME. Because it so happens that an hour, an hour and a half before it
sets, the things on the earth still keep their colors like that. Later the blue and the violet color them
darker, as soon as the sun sends out rays that are more horizontal. Thanks once again for what you
sent me, it really warmed my heart.

And a good handshake in thought, and write to me the day of your departure so that I know
when you'll be in Paris; address in Paris still avenue de Beaulieu 5, isn't it?

Ever yours,
Vincent

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam