1. Theo had written about Serret at the end of November 1884; see letter 408.

2. Van Gogh told his brother in letter 502 that he had started drawing figures again.

3. Theo frequently did business with the art dealer Thomas Wallis (Getty, Goupil Ledgers).

4. Sale of building scrap (F 1230 / JH 770 ).

5. We do not know which drawings of heads Van Gogh gave Van Wisselingh. The art dealer had come to see him in September 1883 (letter 351); Van Gogh was very much occupied with drawing heads between October 1882 and March 1883.

6. The potato eaters (F 1661 / JH 737 ). We do not know which one Van Wisselingh had. It may be the impression that the Gemeentemuseum (The Hague) acquired through J.H. de Bois in 1929. Cf. Van Heugten and Pabst 1995, p. 98.

7. This insulting letter from Van Rappard is letter 503. By the remark that Van Rappard had ‘so obviously’ been in The Hague before he wrote, Van Gogh is insinuating that he had been influenced by H.G. Tersteeg and his colleagues, with whom relations had broken down since the spring of 1882; see letters 208 ff.

8. Hennebeau is the director of the mines in Montsou in Zola’s novel Germinal. He had previously lived in Paris, where he worked ‘with strict honesty, did not speculate, remained at his post, like a soldier’ (d’une honnêteté stricte, ne spéculait point, se tenait à son poste, en soldat’). Once he becomes director, his marriage breaks down and in his unhappiness he throws himself into his work; this is described in several passages, for example: ‘With every catastrophe in his life, he took refuge in the strict execution of orders received, he made the military discipline under which he lived, his reduced portion of happiness’ (A chaque désastre de son existence, il se réfugiait dans la stricte exécution des ordres reçus, il faisait de la discipline militaire où il vivait, sa part réduite de bonheur). See Zola 1960-1967, vol. 3, pp. 1305, 1450.

9. The passage from Germinal in letter 506.

10. A ‘hannekemaaier’ is a grass-mower, an agricultural labourer of German origin.

11. Sensier gives some examples of the good reception given to Millet’s works towards the end of his life, including at the Exposition Universelle of 1867 and at the Paris sale in 1873. See Sensier 1881, pp. 301, 358. ‘Enthusiastic’ here is probably a reference to the article ‘Le Salon’ by Mantz from which Van Gogh had already quoted in letter 506, n. 16.

12. Octave Mouret, a character in Zola’s cycle Les Rougon-Macquart, marries Mrs Hédouin, who manages the department store Au bonheur des dames. He is an ambitious entrepreneur and his modern shops are successful. Van Gogh referred to him elsewhere, specifically in letters 463 and 464.