I have a study of a garden, almost a metre wide. Poppies and other red flowers in green in the foreground, then a patch of bluebells.. .At the end, b… - Vincent van Gogh

To me, that book has been both a revelation and a gospel.

At present I have a portrait of a woman [Madame Roulin].. .Which I've called 'la berceuse', . .It's a woman dressed in green (bust olive green and the skirt pale Veronese green). Her hair is entirely orange and in plaits. The complexion worked up in chrome yellow, with a few broken tones, of course, in order to model. The hands that hold the cradle cord ditto ditto. The background is vermilion at the bottom (simply representing a tiled floor or brick floor). The wall is covered with wallpaper, obviously calculated by me in connection with the rest of the colours. This wallpaper is blue-green with pink dahlias and dotted with orange and with ultramarine.. .Whether I've actually sung a lullaby with colour I leave to the critics..

How right it is to love flowers and the greenery of pines and ivy and hawthorn hedges; they have been with us from the very beginning.