The herd has moved on, the grass is gone, and so now instead of them coming to me, I’ve had to go to them. Pierre tracks their location and each morning he takes me to where they are. I travel lightly these days, to make his life easier, with just a sketch book and my lunch. Because my aim is to create art that is much grander in proportion my canvases have naturally become bigger. The new work will be done on a canvas stretched almost three metres. Mimi and Pierre have set it up for me to paint. It’s so huge it takes up the whole length of my bedroom! I am not painting yet, though – I am still sketching, making drawings every day in my book as I sit and watch the horses.

They’ve grown so accustomed to my presence – yesterday I was even emboldened to touch the young filly. She was sniffing around my lunch basket so I spoke softly to her and reached in to grab a peach.

“Here you go,” I offered, holding my palm flat with the peach on it.

The filly took it and promptly dropped it. I had to pick it up and hold it instead and hope that her teeth didn’t nip me as she nibbled on it. In the end she ate all around the stone and gobbled the whole thing. I have called her Jolie.

June 10, 1853

A foal! He was born last night, delivered during the storm. Mimi says that horses in the wild instinctively give birth on a night like that because they know the rain and the wind will hide the scent of the newborn and protect it from predators.

Last night, the wind had arisen and the dark clouds were brewing across the salt flats of the Camargue when I went to bed. I woke once in the night and saw the lightning flash and thought to myself, “I bet a foal will come.” Sure enough, by the time I found the herd, he’d been born. I have called him Laurent. He is the most beautiful thing. Two of the mares remain very pregnant still, including the lead mare, whom I have named Loulou.

We need another storm to bring the foals out!

June 15, 1853