TCD MS 11274/75 folio 1 recto
April 17
My dearest Your letter containing “Barrage” has just come to hand I was very interested in it. It is not in the least little bit like it but very interesting and very good. LS & Baker say it is a very good and wonderfully clever idea of it without ever having seen it. I do not think it gives any idea of it at all myself. I gave you all the wrong lines I see now. You see as viewed from a position the whole thing takes place in a background of dawning sky and any foreground you do should be a foreground of a ridge much closer to the trenches (to the observer) so the trenches shouldnt be really there at all. Your picture now is a little study of a certain piece of ground. Well it isnt right at all. You should have a nonentity foreground then over the ridge of it & beyond against the dawning sky a great appeal for artillery support is seen. I dont know why the idea is intriguing me so much but it has got hold of me properly. I dont believe that the idea that is in my head is possible to paint. There is or ought to be a kind of dawn clearness of silhouettes that