The sunflower is mine, in a way.

You may know that the peony is Jeannin's, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine in a way.

Paul Gauguin, that curious artist, that alien whose mien and the look in whose eyes vaguely remind one of Rembrandt's 'Portrait of a Man' in the Galerie Lacaze — this friend of mine likes to make one feel that 'a good picture is equivalent to a good deed'; not that he says so, but it is difficult to be on intimate terms with him without being aware of a certain moral responsibility. A few days before we parted, when illness forced me to enter an asylum, I tried to paint 'his empty place'. It is a study of his armchair of dark, red-brown wood, the seat of greenish straw, and in the absent person's place a lighted candlestick and some modern novels.

The Sunflowers

Come with me
into the field of sunflowers.
Their faces are burnished disks, their dry spines

creak like ship masts,
their green leaves,
so heavy and many,
fill all day with the sticky

sugars of the sun.
Come with me
to visit the sunflowers,
they are shy

but want to be friends;
they have wonderful stories
of when they were young — the important weather,

the wandering crows.
Don't be afraid
to ask them questions!
Their bright faces,

which follows the sun,
will listen, and all
those rows of seeds — each one a new life! — hope for a deeper acquaintance;
each of them, though it stands
in a crowd of many,
like a separate universe,

is lonely, the long work
of turning their lives
into a celebration
is not easy. Come

and let us talk with those modest faces,
the simple garments of leaves,
the coarse roots in the earth
so uprightly burning.

This is how you start to get respect, by offering something that you have.

Many thanks for your letter and the Gauguin woodcuts.. .One can see, incidentally, that Gauguin had Persian miniatures, Indian batik and Chinese art in his very blood. The shapes of the birds and the horse show that clearly. But although it looks very well, Gauguin can't stimulate us present-day artists much. We need a direct route from life to plastic form. And we get it by perpetually drawing everything we see.

..I saw Gauguin; he told me his theories about art and assured me that the young [artists] would find salvation by replenishing themselves at remote and savage sources. I told him that this art did not belong to him, that he was a civilized man and hence it was his function to show us harmonious things. We parted, each unconvinced. Gauguin is certainly not without talent, but how difficult it is for him to find his own way! He is always poaching on someone's ground; now he is pillaging the savages of Oceania.

In my yellow room,
Sunflowers with purple eyes stands out on a yellow background.
They bath their stems in a yellow pot, on a yellow table.
In a corner of the painting, the signature of the painter: Vincent.
And the yellow sun that passes through the yellow curtains of my room floods all this fluorescence with gold.
And in the morning upon awakening, from my bed,
I imagin that all this smells very good.
Oh yes! He loved yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from holland.
Those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul
That abhorred the fog, that needed the warmth.
When two of us were together in arles, both of us mad and at constant war over the beauty of color, me, i loved the color red,
Where to find a perfect vermilion?
He traced with his most yellow brush on the wall,
Suddenly turned violet.

Je suis saint esprit
Je suis sain d'espri.

Paul gauguin, 1894.

And do come as soon as you possibly can! P.S. to Gauguin. If you are not ill, do please come at once. If you are too ill, a wire and a letter, please. P.S. to Theo. Perhaps you will think the P.S. to Gauguin too curt, but let him say whether or not he is ill, and anyhow he will recover better here. Have you received my canvases???

He only stopped once, to pick her some great blue violets. She thanked him with real pleasure. In the company of this common man the world was beautiful and direct. For the first time she felt the influence of spring. His arm swept the horizon gracefully; violets, like other things, existed in great profusion there; would she like to see them?
'Ma buoni uomini.'
He bowed. Certainly. Good men first, violets afterwards.

"Wear a red flower, tonight." And when Grigory Gershuni stood before his vast audience in the evening, and saw Nature flaunting her scarlet beneath the multitude of pale faces raised eagerly for his message; he said: "I wanted you to wear this symbol of the joy and the beauty of life because we demand not only bread, but roses." Yes, Bread and Roses! When the Revolution was successful, did our fellow workers think only of bread? No. Great and terrible as the need was, they lost no time securing to themselves: in the fullest measure possible--Roses! Roses! The flowers of Song, the Dance, the Opera, Drama, the flowers of Science--of Knowledge.

Ladies and gentlemen, I accept the flowers as a memento of reconciliation between the white and colored races of the southern states. I accept it more particularly as it comes from a colored lady, for if there is any one on God's earth who loves the ladies I believe it is myself.

The road to freedom is bordered with sunflowers.

I have read your pleasant letter of 14th with singular pleasure. I discern your kind inclination and affection which I feel deeply obliged to requite [you] with service and friendship. Because of [my] inclination to do this, [and] in spite of your wish (of Constantijn Huygens], [I] am sending [you] along [with this letter] a painting, hoping that you will accept it, because it is the first momento which I offer you, Sir.. ..postscripttum]: My [dear] Sir: hang this picture in a bright light and in such a manner that it can be viewed from a distance. It will then sparkle at its best.