In my figures [of his famous painting 'Vision After the Sermon'] I have achieved a great simplicity, which is both rustic and superstitious..... In this picture the landscape and the struggle [between Jacob wrestling with the angel] exist only in the imagination of the people whom the sermon has moved to prayer. That's why there is a contrast between the people, depicted naturally, and the struggle in its unnatural and disproportioned landscape.

p. 24: in a letter to Vincent van Gogh, c 1888 - 'The Writings of a Savage' (1996)