Friday, 4 July 1884

The Sèvres painting is here, at the studio. One might call it April. It makes no difference to me, but this April strikes me as execrably bad!!! The background is an intense green and dirty at the same time. The woman is not at all what I wanted, not at all. I dashed it off like that, but it is not the feeling I was after, not at all. In sum, more than three months wasted.

To crown it all! To crown it all, it turns out the wrestlers do not perform outdoors but inside the booths and chiefly in the evenings. That changes everything, for I have no wish to paint by artificial light, and I would lose the appeal of street types altogether.