Pollard Tree: Sketch and Letter by Vincent Van Gogh.
To Theo from The Hague, July 1882.I’ve attacked that old giant of a pollard willow, and I believe it has turned out the best of the watercolours. A sombre landscape — that dead tree beside a stagnant pond covered in duckweed, in the distance a Rijnspoor depot where railway lines cross, smoke-blackened buildings — also green meadows, a cinder road and a sky in which the clouds are racing, grey with an occasional gleaming white edge, and a depth of blue where the clouds tear apart for a moment.
In short, I wanted to make it like how I imagine the signalman with his smock and red flag must see and feel it when he thinks: how gloomy it is today.via Bibliodyssey - Handshakes in Thought: The Van Gogh Letter Sketches
(with thanks to jamreilly)
