1. These were letters 208 and 209.

2. The fact that Van Gogh said this in French could mean that there was a model present; on a previous occasion Van Gogh had spoken to Tersteeg in English for the same reason (see letter 210).

3. A year after Degroux’s death Emile Leclerq described the artist as a solitary man who had turned his back on the world, a person with a ‘terrible melancholy’, a ‘condemned man’, ‘sad and profound’, who identified strongly with the deprived people he portrayed and whose depictions of hardship and abuse were distasteful to some people: ‘It was only dark emotions and feelings of quiet desperation that he rendered well; his inner self was visible everywhere. The cheerful note was present in his work only in the form of a misanthropic humour ... He was mercilessly tormented by a disease that was to overwhelm him, and a resigned melancholy was the essence of his character and his talent’. (Il n’a jamais bien rendu que les sensations sombres et les mouvements placidement désespérés: son moi se reflétait partout. La note gaie n’existe dans son oeuvre qu’à l’état d’humour misanthropique ... Inexorablement tenaillé par un mal qui devait le vaincre, une mélancolie résignée faisait le fond de son caractère et de son talent). See Emile Leclerq, Charles De Groux. Brussels 1871, espec. pp. 21 (quotation), 22, 28. Regarding Van Gogh’s discussion with Uncle Cor, see also letters 228 and 236.

a. Read: ‘nam’ (took, took out).

4. Street scene, ‘Paddemoes’ (F 918 / JH 111 ).

5. The drawing of Vleersteeg is not known.

6. Bakery in Noordstraat, ‘Geest’ (F 914 / JH 112 ).

7. The drawing of Vismarkt is not known.

8. A rijksdaalder is 2.50 guilders.

9. This took place on ‘Saturday, 11 March at half past seven in the evening (Hofje van Nieuwkoop)’, according to the announcement in Het Vaderland of 9 March 1882. The Dutch painter, musician, improviser and speaker Anton (Tony) Lodewijk George Offermans produced the farce presented that evening at the Hague artists’ society Pulchri. According to Gram, this was ‘a kind of revue, in which current events were criticized in the most entertaining way’, displaying ‘extraordinary humour and wit’. See Gram 1881, pp. 1-2; Van Gelder 1947, pp. 41-44, 53-54; and Van Kalmthout 1998, pp. 336-342.

10. For Nicolaes Maes’s etching The crib , see letter 40, n. 11.

11. The makers of this tableau vivant could have based their idea on the drawing Isaac blessing Jacob (London, Lady Melchett), but the theme was more likely taken from a work by one of Rembrandt’s pupils. The subject was especially popular among artists in the circle of Rembrandt; indeed, some of their paintings were long thought to be by his hand. This is true, for instance, of Isaac, Jacob and Rebecca by Govert Flinck, after which Johannes Pieter de Frey made an engraving, calling it ‘after Rembrandt’. Van Gogh knew prints by De Frey after Rembrandt (see letter 54). See The drawings of Rembrandt. Complete edition in six volumes by Otto Benesch. Ed. Eva Benesch. New York 1973, pp. 43, 250, cat. no. 892; and Hidde Hoekstra, Rembrandt en de bijbel. Verhalen uit het Oude en Nieuwe Testament, door Rembrandt in schilderijen, etsen en tekeningen in beeld gebracht. Utrecht n.d., pp. 41-42.

12. Van Gogh saw the works of art mentioned below in Goupil’s ‘gallery of paintings’ in The Hague (cf. letter 212, l. 56).

13. Jozef Israëls, An old man – Fisher (Old friends) (Philadelphia Museum of Art, William L. Elkins Collection). Ill 192 . See exhib. cat. Paris 1882, p. 120, cat. no. 1388 under the title Dialogue silencieux (Silent dialogue); exhib. cat. Groningen 1999, pp. 201-203, cat. no. 36.

14. Thomas Carlyle wrote The French Revolution (1837), a dramatized account, and supplied the 1845 edition of Oliver Cromwell’s letters and speeches with highly personal commentary. Cf. letter 132 and the illustrated edition: Carlyle 1846. It is uncertain whether Van Gogh already knew Carlyle’s portrait from The Graphic, which he mentions a year later, but it definitely bears some resemblance to the head of the man in Israëls’s painting (see letter 325, n. 33).

15. Taken from Longfellow’s poem ‘My lost youth’, in which the line quoted recurs at the end of every verse. See letter 126, n. 19.

16. Jean-François Millet’s Death and the woodcutter, 1859 (Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek). Ill. 283 . It is possible that Van Gogh knew Pierre Edmond Alexandre Hédouin’s print La mort et le bûcheron after this work, which had appeared in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts 1859, p. 364. See exhib. cat. Paris 1998, pp. 106-114, cat. nos. 49-52.

17. It was previously assumed that Van Gogh is referring here to Jozef Israëls’s Peasant family at table, 1882 (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum) Ill. 188 . This canvas measures 71 x 105 cm, however, and he speaks of ‘a small [one]’, so perhaps he is referring to one of the two variations of it, namely the version with six figures which was formerly in the Alexander Young Collection, 53.5 x 85 cm (present whereabouts unknown) or a smaller variation on panel, 48 x 69 cm (Sotheby’s London, 17 November 1985, no. 224). See exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1993, pp. 78-80, cat. no. 3 and Van Gogh Museum Journal 1995. Amsterdam and Zwolle 1995, p. 189. Cf. in this context the composition in the photogravure Peasants at table, published by Goupil (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum). Ill. 193 . This print was made after the painting The frugal meal (Glasgow, Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove); see also letter 257, n. 18. Silent dialogue was, incidentally, the only work by Israëls at the Salon.

b. Read: ‘straks’ (soon).

18. The source of this quotation has not been traced. Van Gogh cites it again in letters 750 and 784; cf. also letter 826.

19. This is not a literal quotation from Sensier, but its meaning fits in with Millet’s ‘programme’ as a painter.

20. This refers to the period in which Van Gogh worked as a clerk in The Hague, from August 1869 to May 1873. In 1867 Tersteeg became the manager of Goupil’s Hague branch, at which time he and his wife, Maria Magdalena Alida Pronk, went there to live.

c. Read: ‘is hij er in gelopen’ (he’s been caught).

d. Literally ‘regretfulness of heart’; probably to be understood as ‘remorse’.

e. Meaning: ‘meteen’ (immediately).