1. Vincent had asked about De Haan and Isaäcson’s work in letter 707.

2. Meijer Isaac de Haan, Uriel Acosta (present whereabouts unknown) shows the seventeenth-century Portuguese religious philosopher Uriël da Costa, who was exiled from the Jewish community by the Board of Rabbis in Amsterdam. The work was shown in the summer of 1888 in the Panorama Building at Plantage Prinsenlaan in Amsterdam, at an exhibition of works by De Haan and his pupils Louis Jacob Hartz and Joseph Jacob Isaäcson. The drawing after the work – which is what Theo must mean here – was published in J. Zürcher, Meijer de Haan’s Uriël Acosta. Amsterdam 1888. Ill. 916

. I.N. Stemming (pseudonym of the painter Johann Eduard Karsen) had criticized the painting as a poor imitation of Rembrandt, unworthy to be called a ‘work of art’. See ‘Meijer de Haan’s Uriel Acosta’, De Nieuwe Gids 3, 1 July 1888, part two, pp. 435-437 (with epilogue on 15 July). Theo read De Nieuwe Gids at this time (FR b916).

J.A. Alberdingk Thijm’s opinion was less harsh. He thought that the ‘design of the painting, the colour, the costumes’ were reminiscent of Rembrandt, but that the execution was too dark and rather slapdash. See Weekblad De Amsterdammer, 15 July 1888, p. 3. Cf. also letter 707, n. 2.

3. These two drawings by De Haan, of which Theo sent photographs, have not been identified. One of them must have been the drawing of the gravedigger that Vincent mentions in letter 736.

4. Seurat had spent the summer in Port-en-Bessin (Normandy). See exhib. cat. Paris 1991, p. 408.

5. See letter 707, n. 5, for Seurat’s frames.

6. See letter 583, n. 9, for Daudet’s Tartarin de Tarascon and Tartarin sur les Alpes, and letter 292, n. 1, for Le Nabab.

7. See letter 628, n. 20, for Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème.

8. We do not know which library Theo borrowed books from; bookshops also lent books. In 1881 his friend Andries Bonger was librarian to the ‘Hollandsche Club’ (FR b1679); in 1882 he refers to the ‘public library’ (bibliothèque populaire) (FR 1745). Jo van Gogh-Bonger also used a library in Paris: in July 1890 she asked Theo to return the books she had borrowed. See Brief happiness 1999, p. 264.