1. If we may assume that Van Gogh was talking here about his time in the Borinage, in other words the years 1878-1879, his description of his own situation as ‘critical’ is a reference to the fact that he had come to a complete dead end and, shortly afterwards, his father had wanted to have him committed to a lunatic asylum. The Van Gogh family must also have been going through a difficult period, probably for financial reasons, but nothing further is known about this. It could explain, at least in part, why so little family correspondence from this period has been preserved, given that if this is true these letters must have contained a great many sensitive passages.

2. Van Gogh is referring to the first period in The Hague at the beginning of 1882.

a. Means: ‘onderkomen te vinden’ (find a berth); in this case: get a job.

3. Moniteur Universel was a publishing house at 13 quai Voltaire in Paris, where Le Moniteur Universel, Journal Politique Quotidien was published, along with the weekly Le Petit Moniteur Universel du Soir, 1869-1914 and its supplement Le Petit Moniteur Illustré. The illustrated magazines Le Monde Illustré, La Revue de la Mode and La Mosaique. Revue Pittoresque de Tous les Temps et de Tous les Pays also had their offices in the same building. As well as magazines, the firm also published books (illustrated and otherwise) and prints.

4. This should be read here as the English word, as in letter 401.

5. Van Gogh wrote about his promise to send work to the art dealer Elbert Jan van Wisselingh in Paris in letter 380.

6. After an initial shipment of three studies on or about 23 September (see letter 389), this was the second batch. It is not certain which works it contained; two of them were very probably Two women working in the peat (F 19 / JH 409

) and Farm with stacks of peat (F 22 / JH 421

). If Cottages (F 17 / JH 395

) was not in the first batch it could also have been part of this second consignment. See letter 447, n. 7 and cat. Amsterdam 1999, pp. 48-57 (cat. nos. 4-5), 239.

7. This saying is derived from Luke 21:19.

8. Van Gogh probably means the days of his youth, when drawing was still free of obligations.

9. This appears to be a quotation, but no source has been found (Van Gogh also used the phrase in letter 133 and 694).

10. The proverb goes back to sources in classical antiquity, and was known primarily through Virgil, Aeneis 10, 284: ‘Audentis fortuna iuvat’. Van Gogh uses the maxim again in letter 492. Cf. Walther 1963-1967, vol. 1, p. 193, no. 1704.