1. This is letter 287.

2. The lithograph ‘At eternity’s gate’ (F 1662 / JH 268 ) sent with letter 288.

3. Workman sitting on a basket, cutting bread (F 1663 / JH 272 ). This is evident from letter 290, in which Van Gogh speaks of ‘the left leg with the muddy boot’ (l. 16).

4. The ‘income and expenditure account’ of the Society for General Welfare confirms that the magazine De Zwaluw received 3417.01 guilders in support in the year 1882-1883, and 4128.51 guilders in 1883-1884 (SAAm, archiefstuk 211-1238).

5. For the expression ‘How (not) to do it’, which Van Gogh borrowed from Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit, see letter 179, n. 3.

6. For this expression, see letter 234, n. 4.

a. Said of someone who has a bad reputation everywhere.

7. Sir John Everett Millais’s painting The North-West passage (London, Tate) was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874. ‘Millais accompanied the painting with the Captain’s thoughts about the search for the North-west passage: “It might be done, and England should do it”.’ Ill. 263 . See exhib. cat. London 1992, pp. 136-137, cat. no. 77.

8. Lev. 6:9-13.

9. A reference to the Dutch Golden Age in the seventeenth century.

10. ‘Technique’ is a euphemism here: Van Rappard had spoken of ‘drawing mistakes’ (see letter 284).

11. Van Gogh means 1 December; see Date.