1. The second sheet of this letter was written a day earlier – Van Gogh says he forgot to enclose it with letter 632.

2. Wheatfield with setting sun (F 465 / JH 1473 ).

3. See letter 630, n. 4, for Bernard’s Brothel scene .

4. Zouave (F 423 / JH 1486 ). Bernard never got this painting.

5. These seven studies are Wheatfield with setting sun (F 465 / JH 1473 ), Wheatfield (F 411 / JH 1476 ), Arles seen from the wheatfields (F 545 / JH 1477 ), Wheatfield with sheaves (F 561 / JH 1480 ), Wheatfield with sheaves (F 558 / JH 1481 ), Wheat stacks (F 425 / JH 1442 ) and Sower with setting sun (F 422 / JH 1470 ). See letter 629, nn. 3 and 4.

6. In his Vollard edition of the letters, Bernard felt that he had to correct Van Gogh about the animals symbolizing the evangelists: ‘He ought to have said lion instead of bull, the ox having already been mentioned for Saint Luke, patron of painters, to whom Vincent dedicates himself’ (‘Il eut fallu dire le lion au lieu du taureau, le boeuf étant déjà cité pour Saint Luc, patron des peintres, auquel Vincent se voue.’). See Lettres à Bernard 1911, p. 117. The crux of the passage, however, is not so much iconographical accuracy or completeness as Van Gogh’s view that one must accept one’s humble place in the face of the very great. See also exhib. cat. Chicago 2001, p. 122.

7. Van Gogh is referring here to his earlier remarks about Christ as an artist (letter 632) and about creativity as against sexual activity (letter 628).

8. These were the poems on the back of the drawing Brothel scene : see letter 630, n. 6. Although Van Gogh calls them ‘sonnets’, strictly speaking they are not.

a. Read: ‘suffisamment forte en premier lieu’.