（一）（18 June, 1888 H. Anna Suh: p203） (...land ...blatantly violet...The sky chrome yellow...) There are many echoes of yellow in the soil, neutral tones resulting from the mixing of violet and yellow; but I bothered hardly at all about the truth of the colors. I'd rather produce naive images of the kind in old almanacs, those old country almanacs in which hail, snow, rain, and fine weather are represented in an entirely primitive manner, like that used so successfully by Anquetin in his Harvest. I must confess to you that I am actually quite fond of the countryside, having been brought up there -- snatches of memories, a longing for the infinite -- of which the sower ad the sheaf are symbols -- still enchant me now as they did in the past. But when shall I get round to doing this picture of the starry sky that has been so much in my thoughts? Alas, alas! It is just as that excellent fellow Cyprien says in J.K. Huysmans' En Menage (Living Together): the finest pictures are those you dream about while you are lying in bed smoking a pipe, but what you never actually paint.
But you have to try, no matter how incompetent you feel in the face of that unspeakable perfection, those glorious splendors of nature.
The town violet, the celestial body yellow, the sky blue-green. The wheat is all in tones of old gold, copper, green-gold, red-gold, yellow-gold, bronze-yellow, green-red. A size 30 canvas, square. I painted it when the mistral was blowing hard, my easel fixed to the ground with iron pegs, a device I can recommend. You drive the legs of the easel into the ground, then alongside them fifty centimeter long iron pegs. Then you tie it all together with ropes. And that way you can work in the wind.
What I wanted to say about white and black is this. Let's take the Sower. The picture is divided in two: one half -- the upper part -- is yellow, the lower part is violet. Now the white trousers relax the eye and distract it just at the moment when the simultaneous, excessive contrast of the yellow and violet begins to jar. That's what I wanted to say.
（二） I must warn you that everyone will think that I work too fast. Don't you believe a word of it. Is it not emotion, the sincerity of one's feeling for nature, that draws us, and if the emotions are sometimes so strong that one works without knowing one works, when sometimes the strokes come with a continuity and a coherence like words in a speech or a letter, then one must remember that it has not always been so, and that in time to come there will again be hard days, empty of inspiration. So one must strike while the iron is hot, and put the forged bars on one side.
（三） Don’t believe, then, that I would artificially maintain a feverish state — but you should know that I’m in the middle of a complicated calculation that results in canvases done quickly one after another but calculated long beforehand. And look, when people say they’re done too quickly you’ll be able to reply that they looked at them too quickly. And besides, I’m now going over all the canvases a little more before sending them to you. But during the harvest my work has been no easier than that of the farmers themselves who do this harvesting. Far from my complaining about it, it’s precisely at these moments in artistic life, even if it’s not the real one, that I feel almost as happy as I could be in the ideal, the real life.
一）
土色灿紫--天色铬黄-- 映变于地，诸多谐合。然予无执于色之辨真，宁图以稚拙，类彼见于乡村古历者。无论雹雪雨晴，彼古历均能以初简法图之。Anquetin氏尝以《农收》一画大善其法。君知否，予情淑乡野甚，以长于斯也。点滴所记，玄黄之念，像播农束秆，神予心如昨焉。然予念念者明星在天，何日得至之于素哉？呜呼！若有君子曰：闲卧烟草，得诸神游而未得诸笔下者，画之至善者也。
然画人必恒习之，弗以天地有大善至华而患人力之穷也。
村紫，太阳黄，天蓝翠。麦色尽分以古金、新铜、翠金、朱金、黄金、铜黄、翠朱。予用画素30号，正方，作画于劲风中。画架以铁固于地，予以为此善法可广之。先入架脚于地，横加以铁一尺半者数，绳以连之，则劲风无患矣。
又告：《播农》一画上黄下紫，农人裤白，以间黄紫相薄之欲满而迸，亦以懈观者目也。此黑白二色之用也。
（二）
请警君听，闻人病予作画疾甚，必莫信之。
夫宰画人者，莫非向天地之心，垂万物之情。及心情壮烈，不以画为役而画成。前笔生后笔，若连语成言，连字成文。然予辈须省此弗可久持，来者或有苦灵之不至者。是夫，宜趁热打铁，且蓄之以备也。
（三）
莫以予恋执狂状。君鉴，予今得画络绎皆以腹有成稿先。谋划审度旷日繁难，方得下笔如风。故若闻人言予画病速成，请答以曰：君病速观。再者，予今出画于君必先复笔一二以全之。画成而收，予亦非逸于农收之人也哉。然予无怨，反以为画者依性乐命之时，虽非真命亦无害焉。
（一）（18 June, 1888 H. Anna Suh: p203）
(...land ...blatantly violet...The sky chrome yellow...) There are many echoes of yellow in the soil, neutral tones resulting from the mixing of violet and yellow; but I bothered hardly at all about the truth of the colors. I'd rather produce naive images of the kind in old almanacs, those old country almanacs in which hail, snow, rain, and fine weather are represented in an entirely primitive manner, like that used so successfully by Anquetin in his Harvest. I must confess to you that I am actually quite fond of the countryside, having been brought up there -- snatches of memories, a longing for the infinite -- of which the sower ad the sheaf are symbols -- still enchant me now as they did in the past. But when shall I get round to doing this picture of the starry sky that has been so much in my thoughts? Alas, alas! It is just as that excellent fellow Cyprien says in J.K. Huysmans' En Menage (Living Together): the finest pictures are those you dream about while you are lying in bed smoking a pipe, but what you never actually paint.
But you have to try, no matter how incompetent you feel in the face of that unspeakable perfection, those glorious splendors of nature.
The town violet, the celestial body yellow, the sky blue-green. The wheat is all in tones of old gold, copper, green-gold, red-gold, yellow-gold, bronze-yellow, green-red. A size 30 canvas, square. I painted it when the mistral was blowing hard, my easel fixed to the ground with iron pegs, a device I can recommend. You drive the legs of the easel into the ground, then alongside them fifty centimeter long iron pegs. Then you tie it all together with ropes. And that way you can work in the wind.
What I wanted to say about white and black is this. Let's take the Sower. The picture is divided in two: one half -- the upper part -- is yellow, the lower part is violet. Now the white trousers relax the eye and distract it just at the moment when the simultaneous, excessive contrast of the yellow and violet begins to jar. That's what I wanted to say.
（二）
I must warn you that everyone will think that I work too fast.
Don't you believe a word of it.
Is it not emotion, the sincerity of one's feeling for nature, that draws us, and if the emotions are sometimes so strong that one works without knowing one works, when sometimes the strokes come with a continuity and a coherence like words in a speech or a letter, then one must remember that it has not always been so, and that in time to come there will again be hard days, empty of inspiration.
So one must strike while the iron is hot, and put the forged bars on one side.
（三）
Don’t believe, then, that I would artificially maintain a feverish state — but you should know that I’m in the middle of a complicated calculation that results in canvases done quickly one after another but calculated long beforehand. And look, when people say they’re done too quickly you’ll be able to reply that they looked at them too quickly. And besides, I’m now going over all the canvases a little more before sending them to you.
But during the harvest my work has been no easier than that of the farmers themselves who do this harvesting. Far from my complaining about it, it’s precisely at these moments in artistic life, even if it’s not the real one, that I feel almost as happy as I could be in the ideal, the real life.