a. Read: ‘habite’.

1. Martigues is about 55 km to the south-east of Arles on the Mediterranean. Mourier-Petersen (referred to later in the letter as ‘the Dane’), who spent a short time in Martigues at the end of March 1888, may have given Van Gogh this idea. See Larsson 1993, p. 17.

2. The park on place Lamartine was in three sections, which is why Van Gogh refers to ‘the gardens’. See cat. Amsterdam 2007, pp. 15 and 167.

3. See for the legendary beauty of the Arlésienne: letter 578, n. 14.

4. Van Gogh must have had the best known of the Mignards, the painter Pierre Mignard i, in mind. His popular portraits of woman were referred to as ‘Mignardises’.

5. In Maupassant’s novel Bel-ami, the central character George Duroy is very popular with the women of the Parisian beau monde; they give him the nickname of ‘Bel-ami’. Cf. letter 568, n. 11. To Van Gogh – who identified the character in the novel with the author – the egocentric opportunist Bel-ami was also a successful, charming optimist, and it was just such a one who could give the painting of figures a new direction. (cf. Sund 1992, pp. 140-141, 177; and exhib. cat. Chicago 2001, p. 111). See also letter 662, in which Maupassant is again mentioned in connection with a new form of art.

6. We do not know which of Guillaumin’s paintings Russell had; a previous purchase by him was mentioned in letter 602.

7. Van Gogh wrote about this incorrectly addressed letter in letter 601.

8. See for the Théâtre Libre: letter 592, n. 17. Van Gogh must be referring to the production of Tolstoy’s La puissance des ténèbres which ran there from 10 February until mid-March and was a major success. See André Antoine, Mes souvenirs sur le Théâtre Libre. Paris 1921, pp. 85-89. Gustave Kahn had written about this play in La Revue Indépendante no. 17 (March 1888), vol. 6, pp. 433-441, and there had been an enthusiastic review of the performance in Revue des Deux Mondes 58 (15 March 1888), 3rd series, vol. 86, pp. 426-450. Van Gogh may have got his information about it from these articles, or he might have seen it himself before he left for Arles. In letter 677 he may be referring, in the context of his night café, to the title of this play. Cf. also Dorn 1990, p. 138.

Bonger had probably criticized French Naturalist literature, with which Tolstoy’s work was often compared. The writer in the Revue des Deux Mondes (p. 438) thought that La puissance des ténèbres was wrongly regarded as a Russian La terre, Zola’s novel about a peasant family.

9. See for Zola’s Au bonheur des dames: letter 464, n. 2.

10. See for Reid’s return: letter 602.

11. Van Gogh had written to Russell about Reid in letter 598.

12. Macknight was born in 1860, so he was 27 or 28.

13. We do not know which drawing this is.

14. Vincent is responding to Theo’s description of a work he had seen in Brussels. For Degroux’s Saying grace , see letter 143, n. 16.

15. Henri de Braekeleer had a ‘nervous breakdown’ in the 1880-1883 period. See Todts 1988, pp. 73-74.