1. The directors of Goupil & Co. had decided, after consulting Uncle Vincent van Gogh, to transfer Vincent to the London branch. Mrs van Gogh wrote to Theo: ‘our Vincent, whom Uncle Cent and the other Gentlemen have decided will go to London this summer’ (FR b2597, 1 February 1873).

2. Vincent and Theo were both at their parents’ house in Helvoirt (North Brabant) for Easter (13 April) (FR b2617 and b2618).

3. What is meant are the new editions issued by Goupil & Co., in which Teunis van Iterson tried to interest booksellers, printsellers and art dealers during a sales trip. Van Iterson was an employee of Goupil & Co. in The Hague.

4. Mrs van Gogh reported to Theo: ‘Vincent writes that he finds it strange, always hurrying during the day and then after 7 p.m. such a quiet evening. Didn’t we write to you about the two parrots at his house, one of whom spoke better English than Vincent himself? I wasn’t sure whether or not he meant the ladies, but Uncle Cent says that having parrots in the drawing room is very common and further inquiry revealed that they were in fact birds’ (FR b2644, 19 July 1873).

5. It is not known which portrait this refers to. Theo had sent the portrait to Anna, via his parents, shortly before 19 February (FR b2604).

6. On 2 March Van Gogh visited the Dutch exhibit going to the ‘Internationale Tentoonstelling te Wenen’ (International Exhibition at Vienna), which was held from 19 February to 2 March 1873 in Arti et Amicitiae. See J.J. Heij, Een vereeniging van ernstige kunstenaars. 150 jaar Maatschappij Arti et Amicitiae 1839-1989. Amsterdam 1989, p. 143. The paintings were exhibited from 1 May to 1 November 1873 in the Dutch pavilion at the World Exhibition in Vienna; the Netherlands was represented by 167 works of art out of a total of 6,600. See Jutta Pemsel, Die Wiener Weltausstellung von 1873. Das gründerzeitliche Wien am Wendepunkt. Vienna and Cologne 1989, p. 67. Cf. also Sweetman 1988, p. 43.

7. The London office of Goupil & Co., 17 Southampton Street, was at first only a stockroom without a shop, an outlet for the wholesale trade of the reproductions published by Goupil. In 1875 the London branch established a gallery open to the public; see letters 27 and 29. Works of art were also sold there, however (letter 15). See also exhib. cat. Nottingham 1974, p. 8.

8. Sophia (Fie) Cornelia Elisabeth Carbentus-Van Bemmel.

9. Willem Marinus Valkis was, like Van Gogh, a boarder at W.M. Roos’s.

10. Edouard Hamman.