Go to Java and do some Impressionism

3 November

De Haan’s drawings are very fine, I like them a lot. Now doing that with colour, arriving at the same degree of expression without resorting to black and white chiaroscuro, my goodness, that’s not easy. And he’ll even arrive at another type of drawing if he carries out his plan of passing through Impressionism like a school, regarding his new attempts at colour absolutely as studies. But as I see it he’s right several times over to do all that.

Only there are several people who call themselves Impressionists who don’t have his knowledge of the figure, and it’s precisely that, that knowledge of the figure, that will later come back up to the surface and that he’ll always benefit from. I very much want to get to know them one day, De Haan and Isaäcson. If ever they came here, Gauguin would certainly say to them: go to Java and do some Impressionism. Because Gauguin, while he works hard here, always has a nostalgic longing for hot countries. And there you are, it’s undeniable that if one came to Java, for example, with the preoccupation to work there with colour, one would see a heap, a whole heap, of new things. Then in those brighter countries under the stronger sun, the shaded parts as well as the shadow cast by objects and figures become completely different, and the coloration is so intense that one’s tempted quite simply to suppress it. That’s already happening here.

Tagged as: black, colour, De Haan, expression, Gauguin, impressionism, Java, shadow, sun, white