My dear Theo, Sincere wishes for your good health and serenity on your birthday.1 I would like to have sent you the painting of the potato eaters for this day, but although it's coming along well, it's not quite finished yet. Although I'll have painted the actual painting in a relatively short time, and largely from memory, it's taken a whole winter of painting studies of heads and hands. And as for the few days in which I've painted it now — it's consequently been a formidable fight, but one for which I have great enthusiasm. Although at times I feared that it wouldn't come off. But painting is also 'act and create'.

Vincent refers to his famous painting 'Potato Eaters - Letter #0497 to Theo (Amsterdam, 30 April 1885)

497 (501, 404): To Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, Thursday, 30 April 1885. - Vincent van Gogh Letters[vangoghletters.org]