CONTEMPLATION

One night I went for a walk by the sea along the empty shore. It was not gay, but neither was it sad – it was beautiful. The deep blue sky was flecked with clouds of a blue deeper than the fundamental blue of intense cobalt, and others of a clearer blue, like the blue whiteness of the Milky Way. In the blue depth the stars were sparkling, greenish, yellow, white, pink, more brilliant, more sparkling gemlike than at home – even in Paris: opals you might call them, emeralds, lapis luzuli, rubies, sapphires. The sea was very deep ultramarine – the shore a sort of violet and faint russet as I saw it, and on the dunes (they are about seventeen feet high) some bushes Prussian blue.

—Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo