Some significance, something to tell

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from The Hague, 3 September 1882

Yesterday evening I was working on a slightly rising woodland slope covered with dry and moldering beech leaves. . . . The problem, and I found it a very difficult one, was to get the depth of color, the enormous power and solidity of that ground . . . to retain the light as well as the glow . . . .

It was a hard job painting it. The ground used up one and a half large tubes of white - even though the ground is very dark - and for the rest red, yellow, brown, ochre, black, sienna, bistre, and the result is a reddish-brown, but one ranging from bistre to deep wine-red and to a pale, golden ruddiness. Then there are still the mosses and a border of fresh grass, which catches the light and glitters brightly, and is very difficult to capture. So there in the end you have it, a sketch that I maintain has some significance, something to tell, no matter what may be said about it.

I said to myself while I was doing it: don't let me leave before there is something of the autumnal evening in it, something mysterious, something important.

Letter 228
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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