1. This letter (with letter sketch) to Gauguin is not known. Gauguin thanked Theo around mid-August 1889 for sending it: ‘I am very happy with your kind letter, and your brother’s. He is better, but it’s very relative, because having the strength to fight against his illness he is able to withstand it for a long time and yet to have relapses, like the intermittent fevers that are the hardest to cure. I shall write him a reply to his letter’ (Je suis très heureux de votre bonne lettre et celle de votre frère. Il va mieux mais c’est très relatif car ayant la force de lutter contre sa maladie il peut résister longtemps et avoir pourtant des reprises, comme les fièvres intermittentes les plus dures à guérir. Je vais lui écrire en réponse à sa lettre). See Gauguin lettres 1983, p. 109. In August 1889, Gauguin wrote to Bernard about the present letter: ‘Vincent has written to me, and sends you his regards. He’s assessing his state of illness, and I’m very much afraid it will last a long time. He’s still in the hospital’ (Vincent m’a écrit et vous dit bien des choses. Il raisonne son état maladif et j’ai bien peur que cela dure longtemps. Il est toujours à l’hôpital). See Gauguin lettres 1946, p. 163.

a. Read: ‘on verra’.

2. Wheatfield with sheaves and rising moon (F 735 / JH 1761

). The sketch in the letter to Gauguin was made after the painting Reaper (F 617 / JH 1753

3. Trees with ivy in the garden of the asylum (F 746 / JH 1762

4. This ‘large study of an orchard’ which Van Gogh says he kept back (i.e. withheld from the consignment of paintings, see letter 789), was probably Orchard (F 511 / JH 1386

). This canvas measures 72.5 x 92 cm. The canvas in the consignment, Orchard in blossom with a view of Arles (F 515 / JH 1683

), depicts the same orchard. He calls it a ‘variation ... but quite a vague one’, because it is not a derivative but a free variation on the motif.

Pickvance also identified this ‘large study of an orchard’ as F 511, but said that this passage suggests that Van Gogh made a second version of it, F 512. This work, however, is not considered authentic and was not included in the catalogues raisonnés. Moreover, by ‘reworking’ Van Gogh must have meant ‘resume working on’ (namely the same work) and not ‘re-doing’ it in the sense of painting a second version. Cf. exhib. cat. New York 1986, p. 37; incidentally, on p. 296 Pickvance says, incorrectly, that F 511 is the enclosed ‘variation’. Dorn 1990, p. 467, adopts Pickvance’s identification.

5. Vincent had sent six drawings around 18 June (see letter 782), and on 2 July another eleven (see letter 784).

6. Before his appointment as medical director of the asylum at Saint-Rémy, Dr Peyron had worked as an eye doctor in Marseille; he might have known Monticelli personally, since the artist lived there. For Monticelli’s last years, see letter 603, n. 3.