One has to find some explanation why it is that one finds beautiful that which is beautiful. A technical explanation. It is indispensable, to know the rules of color, to know exactly why Van Gogh’s apples at The Hague which are of a definitely crapulous local color seem so splendid, why Delacroix slashed his decorative ceiling nudes with rays of green and yet these same nudes are clear and have brilliant color to their flesh, why Veronese, Velasquez, Franz Hals all had more than 27 blacks and as many whites, Van Gogh committed suicide, Delacroix died hating himself, and Hals drank in despair, why, what was it? Their drawings? For a small canvas of Van Gogh in The Hague Museum we have two pages of his notes on its orchestration. Each color has its reason for existing and I, by God, I’d go to scan canvases without having studied and this because everyone is in a hurry, God knows why....

—Nicolas de Staël, correspondence, 1936