1. For Aurier, ‘Les isolés: Vincent van Gogh’, see letter 845, n. 2.

2. Here Van Gogh quotes verbatim from the end of Aurier’s article (p. 29).

3. For Monticelli’s Vase of flowers , see letter 578, n. 4.

4. Monticelli did not receive recognition in France until well after his death in 1886, but in England and Scotland his work had been sought after by collectors for some time. Van Gogh had undoubtedly heard this from Reid, one of the Scottish dealers in Monticelli’s work. See Fowle 2000 and letter 578, n. 3.

5. In 1869 the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille had acquired two paintings by Monticelli: Landscape with fence and Scene from the Decameron. The comparison with Watteau and the reference to Boccaccio indicate that Van Gogh is referring to the second painting, a landscape with female figures. Ill. 2312 .

6. Jean-Antoine Watteau, Embarkation for Cythera, 1717 (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Ill. 1417 .

7. Lauzet eventually made twenty lithographs for the publication Adolphe Monticelli; see letter 825, n. 7.

8. Diaz and Ziem were Monticelli’s teachers. He received lessons from Ziem as an incipient artist in Marseille, and he painted a lot with Diaz in 1855-1856 in the latter’s Paris studio and in the woods of Fontainebleau. During the last fifteen years of his life, Monticelli worked frequently in Ziem’s studio in Martigues, to the west of Marseille.

9. Van Gogh could have derived his ideas about Boccaccio’s temperament from the article ‘Boccace d’après ses oeuvres et les témoignages contemporains’ by Henry Cochin, which he had read in August 1888 (see letter 665, n. 12). Cochin writes that Boccaccio had a ‘jovial complexion’ (complexion joviale), but at the same time ‘that anxious inclination to grumble, which always made his fits of sadness alternate with the wildest bursts of gaiety’ (cette inquiète disposition à se plaindre, qui fit toujours alterner ses accès de tristesse avec ses plus folles boutades de gaîté) (p. 374). He was proud, suspicious and quick-tempered, but ‘his anger is brief and infrequent. As long as his sensitive pride has not been wounded, he is the most peaceable of men. With a smile, he lets everything go by, with the result that people have been able to accuse him of indifference’ (sa colère est courte et rare. Tant que son sensible orgueil n’a pas été atteint, il est le plus pacifique des hommes. Il laisse tout passer en souriant, si bien qu’on a pu lui reprocher de l’indifférence) (p. 381).

10. An allusion to something Théophile Gautier said about Henri Leys; see letter 28, n. 7.

11. For the portrait Young man with a walking stick , now no longer considered a Rembrandt, see letter 536, n. 9. Van Gogh had previously compared the man in the portrait with Gauguin; see letter 726.

a. Read: ‘quand’.

12. Gauguin’s chair (F 499 / JH 1636 ). Van Gogh painted it around 19 November, at which time he described it as a ‘rather funny’ study (see letter 721). That he painted it several days before Gauguin’s departure as a symbol of his empty seat is an interpretation given here with hindsight.

13. Van Gogh is referring here to the following passage from Aurier’s article: ‘For a long time, he delighted in imagining a renovation of art, made possible by displacing the centre of civilization: an art of the tropical regions ... Wouldn’t he, the intense and fantastic colourist, grinder of golds and precious stones, in fact have been the worthiest painter of these lands of radiance, of dazzling suns and blinding colours, rather than the Guillaumets, the insipid Fromentins and the muddy Gérômes?’ (Longtemps, il s’est complu à imaginer une rénovation d’art, possible par un déplacement de civilisation: un art des régions tropicales ... N’eût-il pas été, en effet, lui, l’intense et fantatisque [read: fantastique] coloriste broyeur d’ors et de pierreries, le très digne peintre, plutôt que les Guillaumet, que les fadasses Fromentin et que les boueux Gérôme, de ces pays des resplendissances, des fulgurants soleils et des couleurs qui aveuglent?) (p. 28).

14. Sunflowers in a vase (F 454 / JH 1562 ) and Sunflowers in a vase (F 456 / JH 1561 ).

15. This remark about the sunflowers as a symbol of gratitude must be seen in the context of Van Gogh’s idea to have his Berceuse flanked by two canvases of sunflowers, just as Icelandic fishermen had in their cabins images of the Virgin Mary flanked by bouquets of flowers. See letters 739 and 776.

16. With regard to Quost and Jeannin, cf. letter 850, nn. 7 and 8.

17. Aurier says that it is unlikely that Van Gogh’s paintings will ever be sold ‘at the price fetched by the little infamies made by Mr Meissonier’ (p. 29).

18. The work intended for Aurier is Cypresses (F 620 / JH 1748 ), which Van Gogh painted in June 1889 (see letter 783) and worked on again later after deciding to give it to Aurier.

19. Van Gogh is referring to a line from a poem quoted by Aurier at the beginning of his article. See letter 850, n. 19.

20. Van Gogh had made the same comparison with Scottish tartans in letter 497, in connection with his Potato Eaters and Blanc’s colour theory.

21. For this technique of ‘washing with lots of water’, see letter 662, n. 8.

22. On Delacroix’s use of Prussian blue, see letter 595, n. 14.