1. Siebe Johannes ten Cate was a friend of Van Rappard. Despite Ten Cate’s reservations about the academy – expressed later in the letter – he was probably the one who had persuaded Van Rappard to attend a winter semester at the Brusselse Académie Royale in 1880. See exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1974, pp. 11, 16, 61; De Bodt 1995, pp. 241, 249.

a. Read: ‘als hij inderdaad degene was die ik heb gezien’ (if indeed he was the one I saw).

b. Van Gogh wrote the words ‘much more satisfactory’ in English.

2. Luke 5:4.

3. The metaphors of ‘catching fish’ and ‘eye beams’ refer to Matt. 7:10 and Matt. 7:4-5; catching fish could also be an allusion to John 21:1-14.

4. Cf. Luke 11:46.

5. For the source of this phrase, which was taken from Petites misères de la vie humaine by Old Nick and Grandville, see letter 178, n. 6.