007. Letter 3, page 1

My dear old Bernard,
Thanks for your kind letter and the sketch of your decoration included with it, which I find really
amusing. I sometimes regret that I can't decide to work more at home and from the imagination.
Certainly—imagination is a capacity that must be developed, and only that enables us to create a
more exalting and consoling nature than what just a glance at reality (which we perceive changing,
passing quickly like lightning) allows us to perceive.

A starry sky, for example, well—it's a thing that I should like to try to do, just as in the daytime
I'll try to paint a green meadow studded with dandelions.

But how to arrive at that unless I decide to work at home and from the imagination? This,
then, to criticize myself and to praise you.

At present I am busy with the fruit trees in blossom: pink peach trees, yellow-white pear trees.

© 2007 Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam