2. Exposition Eugène Delacroix au profit de la souscription destinée à éléver à Paris un monument sa mémoire. Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts (Eugène Delacroix Exhibition to benefit the subscription intended to raise a monument to his memory in Paris), Paris (Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts) 6 March to 15 April 1885. See Johnson 1981-1989, vol. 1, p. xxxiv.

3. Eugène Delacroix, La barricade (The barricade), or: La Liberté guidant le peuple (Liberty guiding the people), 1830 (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Ill. 64

. Van Gogh is mistaken (but he does write ‘I think’): the painting depicts the July revolution of 1830, not the popular uprising in June 1848. Delacroix also spoke of a barricade in his letters: ‘I have embarked on a modern subject, A barricade’ (‘J’ai entrepris un sujet moderne, Une barricade’). See Johnson 1981-1989, vol. 1, pp. 144-151, cat. no. 144.

4. This may be a lithograph of Daumier’s The Revolution of 1848. A family on the barricades: see letter 305, n. 6.

5. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who became President of France on 20 December 1848, violated the constitution and forced through a ten-year presidency after the coup d’état of 2 December 1851. A year later he had himself proclaimed Emperor Napoleon iii.

6. François Guizot took part in the July revolution of 1830 and then became one of the pillars of the July monarchy of King Louis Philippe I. He gradually became more conservative, and was appointed premier in 1847. His accommodating attitude towards the king provoked the February revolution of 1848. Louis Philippe I initially ruled as a citizen king but grew ever more authoritarian; his regime became corrupt. He too was brought down by the revolution that ushered in the Second Republic (1848-1852).

7. Edgar Quinet and Jules Michelet, both of whom held liberal views, rebelled against Guizot’s conservative and ultramontane policy.

8. Adolphe Goupil, founder of the firm of Goupil & Cie.

9. Victor Hugo wrote several novels in which the Revolution featured, among them Les misérables (1862), Quatre-vingt-treize (1874), and Histoire d’un crime (1877-1878).

10. This line is taken from Victor Hugo, Les misérables, book 1, chapter 10. See Hugo 1951, p. 67. It is said by a former revolutionary (‘le conventionnel’) in a conversation with Bishop Bienvenu about the achievements of the French Revolution: ‘We brought down the ancien régime in deeds, we did not entirely succeed in doing away with it in ideas.’ (Nous avons démoli l’ancien régime dans les faits, nous n’avons pu entièrement le supprimer dans les idées.) This idea ties in directly with what Van Gogh asserts before the quotation.