"Dear Brother, ...Last Sunday I began something which I had had in mind for many a day: It is the view of a flat green meadow, dotted with haycocks. A cinder path running alongside of a ditch crosses it diagonally. And on the horizon, in the middle of the picture, there stands the sun. The whole thing is a blend of colour and tone a vibration of the whole scale of colours in the air. First of all there is a mauve tinted mist through which the sun peers, half concealed by a dark violet bank of clouds with a thin brilliant red lining. The sun contains some vermilion, and above it there is a strip of yellow which shades into green and, higher up, into a bluish tint that becomes the most delicate azure. Here and there I have put in a light purple or gray cloud gilded with the sun's livery. The ground is a strong carpet-like texture of green, gray and brown, full of light and shade and life. The water in the ditch sparkles on the clay soil. It is in the style of one of Emile Breton's paintings. I have also painted a large stretch of dunes. I put the colour on thick and treated it broadly. I feel quite certain that, on looking at these two pictures, no one will ever believe that they are the first studies I have ever painted. ...I believe the reason of it is that before I began to paint, I made such a long and careful study of drawing and perspective that I can now sketch a thing as I see it. ...[S]ince I have bought my brushes and painting materials, I have slaved so hard that I am dead tired—seven colour studies straight off! ...I literally cannot stand, and yet I can neither forsake my work nor take a rest. ...[W]hen I am painting things present themselves to me in colour, which formerly I never used to see things full of breadth and vigour. ...I have progressed to the extent that when anything in Nature happens to strike me, I have more means at my command ...for expressing that thing with force."