Letter R08 Sunday evening, 28 May 1882
138 Schenkweg, The Hague Amice Rappard,
Thanks 1. I have just now put my drawings into the package for Amsterdam. There are seven in all. The big one of the two 鈥渃harity courts鈥?has become quite flat, because I used Bristol board, and the lines have greatly gained in quickness. Then there is the 鈥淔lorist鈥檚 Garden鈥? this I changed the way you suggested, i.e.
I studied the side of the ditch more carefully, as well as the water in the foreground, and only now it shows to it鈥檚 full advantage, I think, and expresses 鈥淪pring鈥?and a gentle silence.
And then the 鈥淐arpenter鈥檚 Shed鈥?[F 939, JH 150] 鈥?taken from the window of my studio 鈥?by working on it with pen and ink I have brought a new kind of black into it, and now 鈥渢he sun is shining,鈥?because the lights show up more strongly. Today I was at it quite early, for I wanted to make another one like it, and went to the dunes to draw a fish-drying barn, also seen from a height like the carpenter鈥檚 shed [F 938, JH 152], and now it is nearly one o鈥檆lock in the night, but, thank God, everything is finished, and I can look my redoubtable landlord in the face without fear. And so 鈥溍 ira encore鈥?鈥?鈥? I am so glad to have seen you again, and what you told me of your work interested me very much indeed, I assure you. I should so much like to take a few walks with you in this neighbourhood some time. For undoubtedly you would find a lot of subject matter in those fish-drying barns at Scheveningen for instance.
They are enormously Ruysdael-like (I mean that picture of the bleaching fields at Overveen). But perhaps you know The Hague and Scheveningen better than I do. But in case you do not know the 鈥淕eest,鈥?the 鈥淢ud鈥檚 End,鈥?etc., that is to say the Whitechapel of The Hague with all its alleys and courts, I offer to accompany you there, whenever you come to The Hague again.
I have found two more wood engravings for you, one by Mrs. Edwards and the other by Green. The latter one is especially beautiful, an artist painting a signboard with people looking on; time: Louis XVI. And I think I also have an extra copy of a fine Rochussen.
It seems to me that, if you wanted to, you could have a much finer collection than I have, but perhaps you have it already. I have never seen your complete collection, only the small D眉rers and Holbeins and Du Mauriers and some others. If you should find something interesting in this line, please let me know.
Do you know 鈥淭he Wayfarers鈥?by Fred Walker? It is a large etching of a blind old man led by a boy along a frozen gravel road, with the ditch along witch there is copse-wood covered with glazed frost, on a winter evening. It certainly is one of the most sublime creations in this style, with a very peculiar, modern sentiment, perhaps less powerful than D眉rer in his 鈥淜night, Death and Devil,鈥?but perhaps even more intimate, and certainly as origional and sincere.
It is a pity that the artists here know so little of their English colleagues. Mauve, for instance, was quite thrilled when he saw Millais鈥?landscape 鈥淐hill October,鈥?but for all that they don鈥檛 believe in English art,
and they look upon it in too superficial a manner, I think. Over and over again Mauve says, 鈥淭his is literary art,鈥?but all the while he forgets that English writers like Dickens and Eliot and Currer Bell, and of the French, for instance, Balzac, are so astonishingly 鈥減lastic,鈥?if I may use the expression, that their work is just as powerful as, for instance, a drawing by Herkomer or Fildes or Isra毛ls.
Speaking for myself, I hate skepticism just as much as sentimentality; I do not want to suggest that the artists here are skeptics or cynics, but sometimes they seem to be, and take on a certain air of it, whereas confronted with nature they are as serious and devout as can be. However, I often catch myself making the same mistake, after which I lapse into sentimentality on the rebound, more than I ever intend to, so that I have hardly a right to criticize them.
How much that is beautiful 鈥?in the sense of picturesque 鈥?is disappearing these days! The other day I read something by the son of Charles Dickens; he said, 鈥淚f my father were to come back, he would find little of the London he described, the 鈥榦ld鈥?London is disappearing 鈥?is being 鈥榮anified.鈥欌