Br. 1990: 032 | CL: 25
From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Theo van Gogh
Date: London, between Tuesday, 13 and Sunday, 18 April 1875 more...
Source status:
Original manuscript
Location:
Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. no. b25 V/1962
Date:
Letter headed: ‘Londen April 1875’. The fact that Van Gogh refers to ‘last Sunday’ (l. 5) means that the letter was written at least two days before, but less than a week after, the death of Elizabeth Parker on 11 April (cf. n. 1).
Sketch
A. Landscape at Ville-d’Avray (F Juv. XX / JH Juv. 3), letter sketch
1.Elizabeth Parker, the daughter of Mr and Mrs John Parker, with whom Van Gogh boarded in Kennington, died on Sunday, 11 April of pneumonia. See Bailey 1990, p. 54.
3. The poetry of Edmond Roche was published in Poésies posthumes. Paris 1863 (with a preface by M. Victorien Sardou, and etchings). The copy containing Van Gogh’s little drawing is not known.
4. The poem ‘La dune’ consists of two parts, both of which begin with the stanza quoted. Van Gogh says that the poem ‘begins and ends’ with this stanza, but he must have been misled by the page layout (see Roche 1863, pp. 48-50). Its first and last lines are conflated to form the last two lines of the poem’s final stanza.
5. Van Gogh quotes lines 1-2 and 9-11 from the poem ‘Calais (fragment)’. See Roche 1863, pp. 67-68.
6. The etching Ville-d’Avray: L’étang au batelier (Ville d’Avray: The pond with boatman), 1862, serves as an illustration to the poem ‘L’étang’ in Roche’s Poésies posthumes (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. no. p290 M/1977). Ill. 1704. See Robaut 1965, vol. 2, pp. 102-103, cat. no. 3125.
7. Roche 1863, p. 99 (with several small variations). Ville-d’Avray is where Corot painted in his younger years.