1. In the coming weeks Vincent and Theo were to try to kindle Tersteeg’s interest in French modern art; Van Gogh wanted to involve Tersteeg in dealing in work of the Impressionists in England by means of the letter referred to here.

2. The contact between Reid and Van Wisselingh dated from the 1874-1882 period, when Van Wisselingh in London was a partner of the Scottish art dealer Daniel Cottier, and Reid was working in Glasgow. Van Wisselingh, Cottier and William Craibe Angus, an art dealer in Glasgow, acted as agents for one another. Reid joined them later, but the ties to his business were looser. See Heijbroek and Wouthuysen 1999, p. 27.

3. Van Wisselingh had done his training at Goupil’s branch in The Hague (1864-1866) and then worked at the firm’s headquarters in Paris (1866-1874). Between 1881 and 1890, as an independent art dealer, he was an important customer of Goupil’s in The Hague, where Tersteeg had been manager since 1867. See Stolwijk 1998, p. 218 (n. 104).

4. Since 1886 Theo had regularly exhibited and sold work by the Impressionists in Boussod, Valadon & Cie’s upstairs gallery in boulevard Montmartre.

5. On 1 July 1887 Van Wisselingh, who had had his own art gallery in Amsterdam since 1884, married Isabella Murray Mowat Angus in Glasgow. She was the daughter of William Craibe Angus. See Heijbroek and Wouthuysen 1999, p. 27. Angus was Reid’s main competitor in the trade in Monticellis in Scotland.

6. There was a greater awareness of recent developments in French art in Belgium than there was in the Netherlands. In January 1884 a group of Belgian artists, among them James Ensor, Theo van Rijsselberghe and Octave Maus, founded Le Groupe des Vingt in Brussels. Like the Société des Artistes Indépendants set up in Paris the same year, Les Vingt’s aim was to promote modern art in various ways, including staging annual exhibitions – to which foreign artists were also invited. Les Vingt published the weekly L’Art Moderne. Revue Critique des Arts et de la Littérature.

a. Read: ‘à l’aise’.

7. David Croal Thomson managed the London branch of Boussod, Valadon & Cie from 1884 to 1897. In April 1889 he staged an exhibition of twenty works by Monet. See Fowle 1993, pp. 53-54 (appendix 2).

8. One of Van Gogh’s motives for going to the South was to look for opportunities to draw attention to the work of the Impressionists and that of his own generation in Marseille (see also letter 601).

9. See for the Dutch art world’s predominantly condescending and negative attitude to French Impressionism: Tempel 1999.

10. It is not known which new study this was. Previously it was thought to be Bowl of potatoes (F 386 / JH 1365), but that painting dates from early 1889; see Van Tilborgh et al. 2012, pp. 112, 119.