1. The two new friends are the Dutch artist Meijer Isaac de Haan and his apprentice Joseph Jacob Isaäcson, who had been in Paris since 1 August 1888.

2. Theo responded to Vincent’s request with a description of the painting by De Haan in question, Uriel Acosta (see letter 708, n. 2). Evidently the frames they used were really out of the ordinary: the art critic J.A. Alberdingk Thijm described the ‘heavy frame’ in which De Haan’s painting was mounted (‘a Corinthian cornice, supported by flanking columns’) and reported that works by Isaäcson at the same exhibition in the Panorama Building in Amsterdam were also in ‘heavy, expensive frames’. See Weekblad De Amsterdammer, 15 July 1888, p. 3.

3. Gauguin may have written this in the (now lost) letter that Van Gogh had just received, but Van Gogh could also be referring to letter 688, in which Gauguin had described the colouration and the ‘great rustic simplicity’ of The vision after the sermon .

4. See letter 623, n. 16, for Russell’s house.

5. Van Gogh is referring to the innovations Seurat introduced in his frames from the start of 1888. He exhibited Models , which Van Gogh probably saw in his studio (see letter 589, n. 19), at the Indépendants in March of that year in an austere white frame with an inner frame painted in colours that contrasted with the painting. Soon after this he started to paint borders on his canvases, replacing the inner frame. See exhib. cat. Paris 1991, pp. 376-377, and exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1995-2, pp. 149-162.

6. The bedroom (F 482 / JH 1608 ). Van Gogh had already written about the painting in letter 705.

7. Piles of French novels and roses in a glass (‘Romans parisiens’) (F 359 / JH 1332 ).

8. Cézanne went through productive periods interspersed with bouts of severe depression, when he had serious doubts about his talent as an artist. On occasion he even destroyed his own work. See Rewald 1986-2, pp. 33, 62, 67, 117, 188.

9. See letter 683, n. 35, for Richepin, Césarine. The novel opens with the description of a retreat by exhausted soldiers (see 4th ed. Paris 1888, pp. 3, 55). By the ‘quarrel of the son and the father’ Van Gogh is referring to the bad relations between Mr de Roncieux and his son Paul. When he discovers that Paul is not actually his son, he kills the boy’s mother.

10. Richepin’s La glu (1881) is a melodramatic novel about the suicide of a prostitute. There is also a stage adaptation of it (1883).

11. In Maupassant’s novella Monsieur Parent (1885), Henri Parent, a forty-year-old man of independent means, leads a miserable existence thanks to the whims and moods of his younger wife Henriëtte; his only comfort is their small son Georges. When he confronts her with her adultery with a friend of the family, Henriëtte walks out on him, taking the boy with her – he, it turns out, is really the lover’s son. From then on Henri leads an unstable and lonely existence and spends most of his time in cafés.

12. See letter 588, n. 6, for Maupassant’s Pierre et Jean.

13. Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet (1834) is about the miser Félix Grandet, who is consumed by a desire for power and rules his wife and his only daughter Eugénie with a rod of iron. Eugénie inherits Félix’s fortune on his death, and this makes her a very eligible catch. Eugénie, though, waits for the man she loves, her cousin Charles, who has gone to the East Indies. When Charles comes back seven years later and tells Eugénie that he is going to marry someone else, she is disillusioned, enters into a marriage of convenience and seeks solace in charitable works.

14. See letter 628, n. 20, for Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème. Van Gogh wrote this sentence in brackets at the top of the first page of the second sheet p. [2r:5].