1. See for Suffer the little children to come unto me by Uhde: letter 500, n. 25. Vincent had asked for more information in this letter; Theo sent a reproduction.

2. Timoléon Marie Lobrichon was known primarily for his genre paintings featuring scenes from childhood and for his portraits of children.

3. Decamps moved away from the academic tradition and, on the basis of a meticulous study of nature, became the pioneer of a ‘romantically-tinged’ Realism in which colour and strong chiaroscuro effects are important. Louis Gabriel Eugène Isabey was known for his sound brushwork and his liking for painting in thick layers (impasto).

4. In ‘Le Salon vi’, published as ‘Feuilleton du Temps’ in Le Temps of Sunday, 14 June 1885, Mantz had written: ‘The Loire at Briare is a fine picture: perhaps the energy of the greenery has a somewhat black vigour, at least for those who dream of the maximum of light everywhere.’ (La Loire à Briare est un beau tableau: peut-être l’énergie de la verdure a-t-elle une vigueur un peu noire, au moins pour ceux qui rêvent partout le maximum du clair) (p. 1). He was of course alluding to the Impressionists; it is doubtful whether Van Gogh – who did not yet know any Impressionists (see letters 467 and 495) – was really able to appreciate what he was saying.

5. Wijnand Nuijen, The old mill (Moving day), 1838 (The Hague, Kunstmuseum). Ill. 1203 . It entered the collection in 1875.

6. Van Gogh also contrasted the concepts of talent and genius in letter 31.

7. In the same issue, Mantz wrote about Paul Meyerheim (‘Le Salon’): ‘The academicians of the future have coined a word to describe the painter who, like the Dutchmen of the past and like Chardin, have made a profession of representing inanimate, or at least quiet objects: they call him a still-life painter.’ (Les academiciens de l’avenir ont forgé un mot pour désigner le peintre qui, comme les Hollandais d’autrefois et comme Chardin, fait profession de représenter des objects inanimés ou du moins tranquilles: ils l’appellent un nature-mortier) (Le Temps, Sunday, 14 June 1885, p. 2).

8. See for the character of Joseph Prudhomme in Monnier’s Scènes populaires dessinées à la plume, Grandeur et décadence de M. Joseph Prudhomme, Mémoires de Monsieur Joseph Prudhomme, and Croquis à la plume: letter 296, n. 3.

9. This is probably the engraving Fisher folk in church after George Clausen, which is in the estate: see letter 235, n. 22. Clausen started drawing in 1867 and initially concentrated on decorations; after 1873 – following a period of training at the South Kensington School of Art – he developed as a fine artist. In the eighteen-eighties he switched his subject from Dutch peasant life to English, but Van Gogh will have meant the former turnaround in Clausen’s work. See Sir George Clausen, R.A., 1852-1944. Kenneth Mc Conkey. Exhib. cat. Bradford (Cartwright Hall), 1980. Bradford 1980, pp. 11-17.

10. Frederick Arthur Bridgman, whose work in The Graphic Van Gogh knew.

11. The article he ‘read recently’ must have been Alphonse Daudet’s ‘L’histoire de mes livres. Les rois en exil’ (The history of my books. The kings in exile), an explanation to accompany his novel Les rois en exil, in which he wrote: ‘To my mind, the difficulty of the work lay above all in the search for models and for true information, and in the tiresomeness of all this representation dictated by the novelty of a subject so unfamiliar to me and my environment and one beyond my everyday and spiritual habits.’ (A mes yeux, la difficulté de l’oeuvre était surtout là, dans cette chasse aux modèles, aux renseignements vrais, dans l’ennui de tout ce reportage commandé par la nouveauté d’un sujet tellement loin de moi, de mon milieu, hors de mes habitudes d’existence et d’esprit.) It was in La Nouvelle Revue 6, January-February 1885, vol. 32, pp. 485-495, quotation on pp. 485-486. The Van Gogh family in Nuenen had a subscription to this magazine (FR b2268).

12. On small figures or figures at work from this period, see cat. Amsterdam 1997, pp. 203-210.

13. ‘The last ones’ were The cottage (F 83 / JH 777 ) and another cottage, both of which had been in the last consignment: see letter 506. Van Gogh had also meanwhile written about Cottage (F 91 / JH 809 ): see letter 508. He painted several cottages during this period.

14. The old church tower at Nuenen (‘The peasants’ churchyard’) (F 84 / JH 772 ).

15. See for these underlying images and for Vincent’s proposal to varnish them: letter 507, nn. 13 and 14.

16. Theo was planning to come to the Netherlands with Andries Bonger at the end of July and visit Nuenen; he left on 7 August; see further letter 522.

17. Vincent had asked Theo to keep an eye out for the Lhermitte prints appearing every month in Le Monde Illustré in the series ‘Les mois rustiques’: see letter 484.

18. Jean-François Raffaëlli, The blacksmiths, 1884 (Douai, Musée de la Chartreuse). Ill. 1235 . Theo must have sent a reproduction of this work. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1885.