I cannot master the rest

Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, from Nuenen, February 1885

When there was snow, I also painted a few studies of our garden. The landscape has changed much since then; now we have splendid evening skies of lilac with gold over dark silhouettes of cottages between the masses of ruddy-colored brushwood - above which rise the spare black poplars, while the foregrounds are of a faded and bleached green, varied by strips of black earth and pale withered rushes along the ditch edges.

I certainly see all this too - I think it just as superb as anybody else, but I am even more interested in the proportion of a figure, the division of the oval of the head, and I cannot master the rest before I have a better grip on the figure.

Well - first comes the figure; I personally cannot understand the rest without it, and it is the figure that creates the atmosphere.

Letter 394
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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