1. For this loan, see letter 231.

2. According to Silvestre, Eugène Delacroix characterized the art of painting as follows: ‘Cette maîtresse jalouse qui veut avoir son homme tout entier’ (This jealous mistress who wants to have her man all to herself); see Silvestre 1878, p. 23, and Silvestre, Histoire, p. 69. Moreover, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in The conduct of life (1860 and 1876 [revised]): ‘Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider, and should be wise in season, and not fetter himself with duties which will embitter his days, and spoil him for his proper work.’ See Essays and lectures. Ed. Joel Porte. New York 1983, p. 1004. Quoted again in slightly different phrasing in letter 249.

3. Van Gogh originally wrote ‘everything that’s ugly’.

4. But cf. 237, in which Vincent writes to Theo that he has not replied to the letter from Uncle Cor and does not intend to do so.

5. Van Gogh referred earlier to this discussion with Uncle Cor in letters 211 and 228.