Contact with people

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Antwerp, mid-January 1886

I want to tell you that Verlat has at last seen my work, and when he saw the two landscapes and the still life that I had brought from the country, he said, “Yes, but that does not concern me”; when I showed him the two portraits he said, “That is different, if it is figure painting, you may come.” So tomorrow I shall start working in the academy's painting class.

Besides, I have arranged with Vinck (a pupil of Leys's by whom I saw things in the manner of Leys, medieval) to draw works of antiquity in the evening.

I think neither of these things will do me harm, and perhaps can be of some use to me either in painting or in drawing. And at all events, it is an attempt to come into contact with people. In the painting and drawing class I saw in passing several fellows my age at work.

Letter 445
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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