Such intimacy!

18 September

Nature here is extraordinarily beautiful. Everything and everywhere. The dome of the sky is a wonderful blue, the sun has a pale sulphur radiance, and it’s soft and charming, like the combination of celestial blues and yellows in paintings by Vermeer of Delft. I can’t paint as beautifully as that, but it absorbs me so much that I let myself go without thinking about any rule.

But what scenery! It’s a public garden where I am, just near the street of the good little ladies, and Mourier, for example, never went there, whereas we used to walk in these gardens almost every day…But you’ll understand that it’s precisely that which gives a je ne sais quoi of Boccaccio to the place. That side of the garden is also, for the same reason of chastity or morality, empty of flowering shrubs such as the oleander. It’s ordinary plane trees, pines in tall clumps, a weeping tree and green grass. But it has such intimacy! There are gardens like that by Monet.

Tagged as: Boccaccio, garden, Monet, painting, sky, trees, Vermeer