A tendency towards great things

21 October

I believe that we’re right to see in the Impressionist movement a tendency towards great things, and not only a school that would limit itself to making optical experiments. Similarly with those who do history painting, then, or at least have done it in the past; while there are some very bad history painters, like Delaroche and Delort, are there not also good ones, like E. Delacroix and Meissonier?

… You know that that interests me a good deal, the influence that Impressionism will have on Dutch painters and on Dutch art lovers.

Here’s very rough croquis of my last canvas. A row of green cypresses against a pink sky with a pale lemon crescent moon.
Foreground a piece of waste land, and some sand and a few thistles. Two lovers, the man pale blue with a yellow hat, the woman has a pink bodice and a black skirt. That makes the fourth canvas of the ‘poet’s garden’, which is the decoration for Gauguin’s bedroom.

Tagged as: colour, Delacroix, garden, Gauguin, history painters, impressionism, impressionist