1. Lampblack contains a fine-grained, deep black pigment.
2. This drawing of an old man reading is not known. It cannot be Man reading a book (F 1001 / JH 278) since that shows not the slightest trace of lithographic crayon. See cat. Otterlo 1970, p. 32, cat. no. 90. On working with lithographic crayon and fixing with milk: cat. Amsterdam 1996, pp. 26-29.
[448]
3. This is probably Head of a man with a pipe and bandaged eye (F 1004 / JH 289 [2424]), whose technique corresponds with that described here by Van Gogh: a – detailed – pencil drawing, gone over with black lithographic crayon, a grey wash and pen in black ink.
It is unlikely to be Old man in his Sunday best with an eye patch (F 1003 / JH 285 [2423]) because the man in that is shown ‘in Sunday clothes with a Sunday patch over his blind eye’ (letter 354). He also makes a different impression from ‘an injured man with a bandage’ who brings to mind ‘a soldier of the old guard in the retreat from Russia’ (ll. 39-40).
[2424] [2423]
a. Read: ‘photogravure’.
4. Means: ‘making duplicates by electroplating metal onto a mould of an object, then removing the mould’, now known as ‘electrotyping’. Cf. for the application of this Georg Ludwig von Krek, Die Galvanoplastik für industrielle und künstlerische Zwecke. Frankfurt am Main 1867.
5. Voorhout and Willemspark in The Hague were where painters lived in some style, with elegant studios in their villas.
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