3. At that time the National Gallery had the following Hobbemas: A woody landscape, A stream by a wood, The watermills at Singraven near Denekamp, The ruins of Brederode castle and Avenue at Middelharnis. Two works that are now no longer accepted as being by Hobbema, A woody landscape with a cottage and A castle on a hill by a river, were exhibited there from August 1876 onwards. Although it is not possible to establish with certainty which work Van Gogh regarded as ‘the’ Hobbema, he was probably referring to the most famous of them, Avenue at Middelharnis. Ill. 931

. See cat. London 1995, pp. 310-313, 607.

4. John Constable, The cornfield, 1826 (London, The National Gallery). Ill. 2122

5. John Constable, The valley farm: Willy Lott’s house, 1835 (London, Tate). Ill. 2123

. This painting was exhibited from 1859 to 1876 in the South Kensington Museum in West London. See cat. London 1995, p. xiv, and Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable. New York etc. 1993, pp. 376-378, cat. no. 216 (Previously published as exhib. cat. London (Tate), 1991.)

6. The retired Anthonius (Antoon) Petrus Hermans, formerly a goldsmith. See on this series of decorations, which can be linked to the four seasons in general and works by Millet in particular: exhib. cat. Paris 1998, pp. 74-78; cf. also Sensier 1881, pp. 286-287.

7. The Meierij in Brabant is the area between the towns of Tilburg, Eindhoven, Waalwijk and ’s-Hertogenbosch, with the River Maas as the northern boundary.

8. Hermans lived on Keizersgracht, district C, no. 384c (now no. 15), then called De Wal, in an imposing house, the ‘Dirven House’ – also known as ‘Rust na Arbeid’ (Rest after Labour) – which was built to a design by Hermans’s friend Pierre Cuypers (RHC, and De Brouwer 1984, pp. 44-45).

9. By the ‘provisional plans’ Vincent must be referring to the ‘little sketches’ he mentions later in the letter. The first one is Sower (F 1143 / JH 509

). The painting of this has been lost.

10. The sketch is Ploughman (F 1142 / JH 512

). Van Gogh painted over the painting after this sketch – it is under Cottage with tumbledown barn and a stooping woman (F 1669 / JH 825

). See Alan Bowness, ‘A Van Gogh discovery’, The Burlington Magazine 111 (1969), pp. 299-300, with x-ray (fig. 49). Later he adapted the composition in the new version Ploughman and a woman planting potatoes (F 172 / JH 514

), see letter 466, n. 1.

11. The sketch for the Shepherd with flock of sheep (F 42 / JH 517

) is not known, but it must have existed (see letter 454).

12. The letter sketch Wheat harvest (F - / JH 508) gives an impression of the picture; the sketch and the painting are not known. This must have been done in the ‘first panel’. Van Gogh also made a preliminary sketch for this similar to those he did for the previous works (as we learn from letter 454).

13. The sketch Planting potatoes (F 1141 / JH 510

). It resulted in the painting Planting potatoes (F 41 / JH 513

). In letters 454 and 459 Van Gogh describes the subject as planting potatoes.