Imagine an immense plain.. ..in the middle, a small Gothic chapel surrounded by trees.. ..around that a hundred tents made of white canvas.. ..in ope… - Eugène Louis Boudin

I dare not think of the sun-drenched beaches and the stormy skies, and of the joy of painting them in the sea breezes.

To swim in the open sky. To achieve the tenderness of clouds. To suspend these masses in the distance, very far away in the grey mist, make the blue explode. I feel all this coming, dawning in my intentions. What joy and what torment! If the bottom were still, perhaps I would never reach these depths. Did they do better in the past? Did the Dutch achieve the poetry of clouds I seek? That tenderness of the sky which even extends to admiration, to worship: it is no exaggeration.

I think I will go back to mahogany [wood, as layer for his paintings], the only stable wood, together with old oak. But mahogany is so heavy. And it has another drawback, it blackens even through the primers if they are not thick enough and applied in several coats.