1. The letter to Bernard is 587; the one to Toulouse-Lautrec is not known. This is the only time that Van Gogh refers to writing to Toulouse-Lautrec; there is no mention of any reply.

2. Van Gogh added the passage ‘I say ... gain more’ (Je dis ... prendre) later.

3. This is letter 586.

4. See for this study, of which only the fragment Walking couple (F 544 / JH 1369 ) survived: letter 587, n. 6.

5. The style described by Van Gogh was in line with the Cloisonnism of Anquetin and Bernard. Cf. letter 575, n. 7 and letter 620, nn. 11 and 12.

6. Guy de Maupassant’s novel Pierre et Jean (1888) had come out in January 1888. It is a Naturalist story about a family that falls apart because of the jealousy and rivalry between the two brothers Pierre and Jean. Maupassant prefaced his novel with an essay titled ‘The Novel’ (‘Le roman’), in which he argues that every literary work should be judged according to the extent that the author has succeeded in realizing his objectives. Modern, Realist writers try to capture ‘Nothing but the truth and the whole truth’ (Rien que la vérité et toute la vérité), but this means anything but a literal rendition: ‘They will often have to correct events in the interests of plausibility and to the detriment of truth, because What is true may sometimes not be plausible.’ (Ils devront souvent corriger les événements au profit de la vraisemblance et au détriment de la vérité, car Le vrai peut quelquefois n’être pas vraisemblable.)

7. Maupassant quotes from Flaubert: ‘Talent is a matter of patience over time. It involves studying everything one wishes to express, long enough and with enough attention to find an aspect of it that no one has seen or spoken of. There is an element of the unexplored in everything, because we are in the habit of using our eyes only with the memory of what people before us have thought about the things which we are looking at. The smallest thing contains a little of what is unknown. Let us find it ... It is in that way that we become original.’ (Le talent est une longue patience. Il s’agit de regarder tout ce qu’on veut exprimer assez longtemps et avec assez d’attention pour en découvrir un aspect qui n’ait été vu et dit par personne. Il y a, dans tout, de l’inexploré, parce que nous sommes habitués à ne nous servir de nos yeux qu’avec le souvenir de ce qu’on a pensé avant nous sur ce que nous contemplons. La moindre chose contient un peu d’inconnu. Trouvons-le ... C’est de cette façon qu’on devient original.) See Maupassant 1987, p. 713.

8. The door of the Roman Catholic church of St Trophime in Arles. Ill. 2174 .

9. This ‘Chinese’ comparison could be a reference to the ‘vocabulary of the strange, complicated, numerous and Chinese’ (vocabulaire du bizarre, compliqué, nombreux et chinois) which Maupassant speaks out against in his preface to Pierre et Jean (on the page after the quote from Flaubert referred to above). See Maupassant 1987, p. 714.

10. The Roman Emperor Nero, who ruled from AD 54-68. His mention here must have been prompted by the Roman remains in Arles.

11. The first communion of Catholic children had taken place shortly before, on 18 March. See Merlhès 1989, p. 260.

12. The political daily L’Intransigeant, founded in 1880 by Henri Rochefort, had been the organ of General Boulanger’s radical-nationalist party since 1887. There were reports on 20 and 21 March (both times on p. 2) about the problems that the snow was causing in Paris: the traffic was disrupted and people were hurt because of the icy conditions; the city was said to look like St Petersburg.

13. General Georges Boulanger was the leader of the ultra-nationalist party (Boulangists). In 1886 he was appointed War Minister in the Freycinet cabinet. In 1888, however, he was dismissed, partly because of his inflammatory language towards Germany. He was stripped of his powers and ordered not to leave Clermont-Ferrand.