1. Shortly after the death of Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, a retrospective exhibition of his work was held in the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. There were 226 works on display.

2. The painting Van Gogh mentions is Christ on the Mount of Olives, 1849 (Langres, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire de Langres). Ill. 1705 . See exhib. cat. Paris 1875-2, p. 52, cat. no. 96.

3. The Corots at the Salon of 1875 were: Women cutting wood, Pleasures of the evening (danse antique) and Biblis, all dating from 1874-1875 (present whereabouts unknown). The wood engraving Bûcheronnes (Women cutting wood) by Auguste Joliet was later published in Le Monde Illustré 24 (5 June 1880), p. 348. Ill. 1706 . Exhib. cat.. Paris 1875-1, p. 77, cat. nos. 519-521; Robaut 1965, vol. 1, p. 33; vol. 3, pp. 322-327, cat. nos. 2195-2197.

4. The paintings in question are Jacob van Ruisdael’s The bush; The storm (this is what Van Gogh probably had in mind when he mentioned L’estacade (The breakwater) – called L’estacade aux eaux rousses (The breakwater with russet waters) in letter 325; and finally, The ray of sunlight (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Ill. 1707 , ill. 1708 and ill. 1709 .

5. Rembrandt, The pilgrims at Emmaus, 1648 (Paris, Musée du Louvre) measures 68 x 65 cm. Ill. 1710 .

6. Rembrandt, Philosopher in meditation (An old man in an interior with winding staircase), 1632 and Philosopher with an open book (The philosopher in contemplation), c. 1640-1645 (Paris, Musée du Louvre). They measure 28 x 34 cm and 28.2 x 34.4 cm, respectively. Ill. 1711 and ill. 1712 . The attributions of these works are now disputed: see Bruyn 1986, vol. 2, pp. 638-644, no. C51. The second painting has been attributed to Salomon Koninck.

7. On 29 April 1858, Jules Breton married Elodie Breton-De Vigne, the daughter of Breton’s former teacher Félix De Vigne. Contrary to what Van Gogh thought, they had but one daughter, Virginie, who was also Breton’s only pupil. She grew up with her cousin Julie, whom Van Gogh had presumably taken to be a daughter of Breton. Cf. exhib. cat. Omaha 1982, pp. 114-115, cat. no. 77.

8. Jules Breton, Les champs et la mer. Paris 1875.

9. Jules Breton, The feast of Saint John, 1875 (private collection). Ill. 1713 .

10. The lines are the last stanza of the poem ‘La Saint-Jean’, taken from Breton 1875, pp. 55-57 (quotation on p. 57).

11. The first of these paintings by Jules Breton in the Musée du Luxembourg is The blessing of the corn in Artois (Procession through a cornfield), 1857 (Arras, Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Arras, Ancienne Abbaye Saint Vaast). Ill. 1714 ; the second is Calling home the gleaners, 1859 (Paris, Musée d’Orsay). Ill. 1715 . Alone actually refers to Evening, 1860 (Cuisery, Saône-et-Loine, Hôtel de Ville). Ill. 1716 . Breton sometimes referred to the last work as ‘my alone’.