1. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Gavarni, l’homme et l’oeuvre. Van Gogh read the book in October 1881: see letter 174.

2. This large study of the Scheveningen beach (later Van Gogh refers to a ‘seascape’), is not known.

3. This sketch of a pink is not known.

4. View of the beach at Scheveningen (F - / JH 227).

5. It is not clear which painting of the woods this refers to. In letter 261 Vincent also sends Theo ‘a few scratches of studies’ he had done that week, including A girl in a wood (F - / JH 183), after F 8 / JH 182 . For other views of woods from this period, cf. A girl in a wood (F 8a / JH 180), Two women in a wood (F 1665 / JH 181) and Edge of a wood (F 192 / JH 184).

6. The enclosed ‘scratch’ after the study of the woods is not known.

a. Means: ‘tekent zich af’ (stands out).

7. Objects of terracotta, brownish red earthenware.

8. For this unfinished painting, see The conscript’s departure by Charles Degroux: letter 164, n. 5.

9. Earlier by ‘board’ (or ‘plank’) Van Gogh always meant a drawing board (letters 202, 216 and 245); here he means painting paper that was pinned to a board. Later in the letter he talks about panel and canvas as supports he is not yet using because they are too expensive. (Later in the correspondence there are two cases where the term ‘board’ refers to a panel: letters 321 and 534.)

10. This scratch from the dunes is not known.

11. In chapter 7 of Zola’s L’assommoir (1877) there is the following description of the birthday party of Gervaise Macquart, the leading character: ‘Wine ... was running round about the table the way the water flows down to the Seine ... In a corner of the shop, the heap of dead soldiers grew larger, a graveyard of bottles on top of which the litter lying on the tablecloth was flung’. (Le vin ... coulait autour de la table comme l’eau coule à la Seine ... Dans un coin de la boutique, le tas des négresses mortes grandissait, un cimetière de bouteilles sur lequel on poussait les ordures de la nappe). See Zola 1960-1967, vol. 2, p. 579. This similarity seems to suggest that Van Gogh had read the book; the allusion in letter 338 also indicates that it had been read in the past. For the novel, see letter 338, n. 12, and cf. also Sund 1992, p. 270 (n. 8).