24 November

Today and yesterday I drew two figures of an old man with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

What a fine sight an old working man makes, in his patched bombazine suit with his bald head.
I’ve finished the book by Zola, Pot-bouille. I thought the most powerful passage was the kitchen maid Adele (scruffy Breton) giving birth in the dark attic room. Josserand is also portrayed with devilish skill and with sentiment. The rest of the characters too, but these two sombre ones, Josserand writing his addresses at night, and that tiny maid’s room, made the most impression on me.

But after Zola’s book I read Quatre vingt treize by V. Hugo at long last. That’s entirely different territory. It’s painted, I mean written, like Decamps or Jules Dupré, with expressions as in old Ary Scheffers, such as The man in tears and The cutter of the tablecloth — or the figures in the background of Christus Consolator. I strongly recommend that you read it sometime if you haven’t read it, for the sentiment in which this book is written is becoming ever more uncommon, and amid the new I see nothing more noble. Truly.
It’s easier to say, as Mesdag did of a certain painting by Heyerdahl done in the sentiment of Murillo or Rembrandt that he didn’t want to buy from you, ‘Oh, that’s the old manner, we don’t need that’, than to replace the old manner by something equivalent, let alone something better. And since many reason like Mesdag these days, without giving it any further thought, it can do no harm if others do reflect on whether we are in the world to pull down rather than to build up. The phrase ‘not needed any more’ — how eagerly people use it and what a stupid and ugly phrase it is. I believe that in a certain fairy tale Andersen puts it in the mouth not of a person but of an old pig. People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

22 October

It’s still autumnal weather here – rainy and chilly, but full of atmosphere – especially good for figures, which show a range of tones on the wet streets and roads in which the sky is reflected. It’s what Mauve, above all, does so beautifully time and again.

As a result I’ve been able to do some more to the large watercolour of the crowd of people in front of the lottery office, and I’ve also just started another of the beach, of which this is the composition.

1 October

These last few days I’ve done almost nothing but watercolours. A scratch of a large one is enclosed. You may remember Mooijman’s state lottery office at the beginning of Spuistraat. I passed it one rainy morning when a throng of people were standing there waiting to get lottery tickets. For the most part they were old women and the sort of people of whom it’s impossible to say what they do or how they live, but who evidently potter along and fret and get on with life.

Of course, viewed superficially, a crowd of folk who evidently attach so much importance to ‘Draw today’ is something that almost makes you and me laugh, because we’re not in the least bit interested in the lottery. But the group of people – and their waiting expression – struck me, and it took on a larger, deeper meaning for me while I was working on it than in the first moment It becomes more meaningful, I believe, if one thinks of it as the poor and money.