Letter 21, page 2

So there are relatively few paintings of vineyards, which are nevertheless of such changing
beauty. So there's still plenty for me to fiddle around with here.

Look here, what I very much regret not having seen at the Exhibition is a series of houses of all
the nations; I think it was Garnier or Viollet-le-Duc who organized it. Well, could you, who will
have seen it, give me an idea, and especially a sketch with the color of the primitive Egyptian house?
It must be very simple, a square block, I believe, on a terrace—but I should like to know the coloring
too. I was reading in an article that it was blue, red and yellow.

Did you pay attention to it? Please inform me without fail! And it must not be confused with
the Persian or the Moroccan; there must be some that are more or less it, but not it.

Anyway, for me the most wonderful thing that I know in terms of architecture is the cottage
with a mossy thatched roof, with its blackened hearth. So I'm very fussy. I saw a sketch of ancient
Mexican houses in an illustrated magazine; that, too, seemed primitive and really beautiful. Ah, if
only one knew the things of those days, and if one could paint the people of those days who lived
in them—it would be as beautiful as Millet. Anyway, what we do know that's solid these days, then,
is Millet; I'm not talking about color—but as character, as something significant, as something in
which one has solid faith.

Now, about your service; will you go? I hope you'll go to see my canvases again when I send the
studies of autumn, in November. And if possible let me know what you've brought back from Brittany,
because I'd really like to know what you yourself believe to be your best things. So I'll write
again soon.

I'm working on a large canvas of a ravine; it's a subject just like the study with a yellow tree
that I still have from you, two bases of extremely solid rocks, between which a trickle of water
flows, a third mountain that closes off the ravine. These motifs certainly have a beautiful melancholy,
and it's enjoyable to work in really wild sites where you have to bury your easel in the stones
so that the wind doesn't send everything flying to the ground.
Handshake.

Yours,
Vincent

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam