Dear Vincent...

Please find this work on copper, a prelude in B-flat Major, for the Yellow House. I heard it was your dream to fill this studio south of Paris, with the work of painters starting with your friend Paul Gauguin.

Why B-flat major? I believe you know yourself the way colour and sound are not at all dissimilar. After all you referred to your sunflowers, begun in this studio, as a symphony in blue and yellow. The key signature, that is in this case B-flat major, is determined by the specific notes used in a musical composition, whether there are any sharps or flats. So the equivalent of a key signature in painting is really a more limited palette and the way the colours in this palette harmonise. In music they have simply given these specific groupings of notes names. I wonder what we would name groupings of colours? For me B flat which is also A sharp looks like a lemon yellow when played in the treble clef. This musical note matched the hue of the table on which the sunflowers sit in this painting I have made for you, so it felt like a happy place to start especially considering your great love of yellow. All the other colours in this picture also fall best in the key B-flat Major when I write the music out. I have drawn below the musical notes of each colour in this painting by way of explaining the key.

It shows the key signature for B-Flat Major on the left and I have drawn the main notes I can hear in the painting in pencil as circles. They don't all play at once but as the eye moves through the painting, looking at specific colours. The perception of colour and sound are the same and occur at the same time. The lowest C and D flat (C sharp) for example, in the bass clef, is the colour of the figure’s dark blue pants. The highest C above the treble is the colour of the sky behind the sunflowers.

When I had the good fortune to stay in Paris, I visited Auver-sur-Oise. I had a little blue book in my pocket which contained some of the published letters you wrote to your brother Theo. I hope you don’t mind. I found myself in a field of corn, I think it was, in this small town and sat there with a friend reading your letters and wondering aloud what might have happened that fateful day in a field perhaps near by. Before leaving I visited your old little apartment, the veil of time and space separating us felt especially thin in that place. For fun I tried to imagine myself looking through this veil, to see you sitting in that small wooden chair, or coming up the narrow stair.

When I was back in Paris I visited the Bastille markets to collect some vegetables and sunflowers. I kept these in my studio and made a short series of sketches in ink as their heads began to bow. I began this painting the following year as a way of restoring myself from a bad experience with pneumonia, in the middle of a global pandemic, having been bed bound for three months. After my recovery, I only had the energy at first for a colourless sketch but it provided me with the excuse to fill my room once again with sunflowers. Eventually I returned to this initial sketch, fleshing out the colours. When working on copper I don’t have complete control over how the colours will shift in their reactions to the metal, and so I waited to see what music would ensue while hoping for the best. When the oil finally set I determined the key of the music. I hope this little painting in turn meets with your approval and that you might find someplace small to hang it in the Yellow House.

Yours truly,
Natasha