© Copyright 2001 R. G. Harrison Letter 477 Arles, c. 13 April, 1888
My dear Theo,
Thank you for your letter and the samples of absorbent canvas, I shall be very glad to have it, but there is no hurry at all, 3 meters of the stuff at 6 Fr.
As to the paints you sent, there are only four large tubes of white, and all the other tubes of white are halfsized.
If he has charged for them accordingly, it’s all right, but look into it. Four tubes of white at 1 Fr., but the rest ought only to be half-price. I find that his Prussian blue and his cinnabar are bad. The rest are good.
Now I must tell you that I am working at 2 pictures of which I want to make copies. The pink peach tree gives me the most trouble.
You see from the three squares on the other side of this page that the three orchards make a series, more or less. I have also just now a little pear tree, vertical, between two horizontal canvases. That will make six canvases of orchards in bloom. I am now trying every day to touch them up and give them a certain unity.
I dare hope for three more, matching in the same way, but so far they have got no further than embryos or fetuses.
I should like very much to do this series of nine canvases. You see, we may consider this year’s nine canvases as the first idea for a definitive decoration a great deal bigger (this present one consists of size 25 and 12 canvases), which would be carried out along just the same lines next year at the same season.
Here is the other middle piece of the size 12 canvases. The ground violet, in the background a wall with straight poplars and a very blue sky. The little pear tree has a violet trunk and white flowers, with a big yellow butterfly on one of the clusters [F 405, JH 1394]. To the left in the corner, a little garden with a fence of yellow reeds, and green bushes, and a flower bed. A little pink house. There now, you have the details of this decoration scheme of orchards in bloom that I have planned for you.
But the last three pictures exist only provisionally; they should represent a very big orchard surrounded by cypresses and great pear trees and apple trees.
The Pont de l’Anglais for you is coming along well, and will be better than the study, I think. I am very anxious to get back to work. As to the Guillaumin, surely it would be a good bargain if it’s possible to buy it. Only since they are talking of a new method of fixing pastels, it would perhaps be wise to ask him to fix it in this way if you do buy it.
With a handshake for you and Koning,
Ever yours, Vincent
I have had a letter from Bernard with some sonnets he has concocted and some of them really come off quite well. He’ll manage to write a good sonnet yet: a thing I could very nearly envy him.
As soon as the Pont de l’Anglais and the copy of the other picture, the pink peach tree, are dry, I’ll send them off.