1. The series Les travaux des champs (The labours of the fields) consists of ten prints, engraved by Adrien Lavieille: Moissonneur à la faucille; Moissonneur à la faux; Paysanne liant des gerbes; La faneuse; Le botteleur; La broyeuse de lin; Le batteur de blé; Les tondeurs de mouton; Le bûcheron; La fileuse (Reaper wielding a sickle; Reaper wielding a scythe; Peasant woman binding sheaves; Woman making hay; Hay baler; Woman grinding flax-seed; The wheat thresher; The sheep shearers; The woodcutter; Woman spinning). The estate contains two copies: one with all ten prints on one sheet, Ill. 1887 [1887], and the other with the depictions cut out (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, t*913 and t*1002-1003). The woodcuts appeared in L’Illustration 21 (5 February 1853), no. 519, pp. 92-93 – Van Gogh’s estate also contains several of these (t*247-250) – and they were published in Dessins de J.-F. Millet, gravés par Adrien Lavieille. Paris 1855. See Sensier 1881, pp. 386-387, and exhib. cat. Paris 1998, pp. 128-141, cat. nos. 55-70.
[1887]
2. For Millet’s The times of the day [1679] [1680] [1681] [1682] (the series The four times of the day), see letter 37, n. 16.
[1679]
3. It is not clear which reproduction Van Gogh used in making his copy after The sower; the only early copy by his hand dates from April 1881, around eight months after this letter was written (F 830 / JH 1 [2334]). See cat. Amsterdam 1996, pp. 79-82, cat. no. 16. Of Millet’s The sower there exist paintings (including one in Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, and another in Kugawa, Yamanashi Prefectural Museum) and a pastel which Van Gogh could have seen at the Emile Gavet sale in 1875 (cf. letter 36, n. 5). In 1873, Paul Edmé Lerat made an etching after the work – which corresponds to a lithograph dating from 1851. Van Gogh owned this etching, to which he applied a grid, but it is not known whether he already had it in August 1880 (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, t*229). Ill. 1888 [1888]. (Cf. also letter 73, n. 5 and letter 686, n. 6). See exhib. cat. Boston 1984, pp. 30-35, cat. nos. 18-19; exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1988, pp. 156-192, cat. nos. 64-80; exhib. cat. Paris 1998, pp. 90-105, cat. nos. 40-48.
[2334] [1888]
4. The sheets in Bargue’s Cours de dessin measure c. 44 x 58 cm; the sample drawings vary in size.
a. Read: ‘qu’il soit’.
5. For Millet’s The two diggers [1876], see letter 142, n. 18.
[1876]
6. Charles Vernier made a lithograph after Millet’s Le vanneur (The winnower). It appeared in Lièvre, Musée Universel 1868-1869 Ill. 296 [296]. There are several copies of the painting: London, National Gallery; United States, private collection; Paris, Musée du Louvre. See exhib. cat. Paris 1975, pp. 73-75, cat. no. 42; p. 208, cat. no. 166; exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1988, pp. 28-29, cat. no. 1; exhib. cat. Paris 1998, pp. 32, 160, cat. no. 2.
[296]
7. Theo had been living in Paris since c. 1 November 1879. The publisher Marchant at rue de Rivoli 140 put numerous reproductions on the market, as appears from Galerie de L’Alliance des Arts. Gravures, eaux-fortes et lithographies. Reproduction des tableaux et dessins des maîtres de l’école moderne. Ornements de tous les styles et de toutes les époques. Paris 1861 (Paris, Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie. Fondation Jacques Doucet).
b. Sclôneurs and sclôneuses were usually children who worked deep underground in the passages immediately behind a miner and dragged the coal away in baskets. Those baskets were known as sclônes in the local patois. With thanks to Freddy Godart. The term ‘sclôneuse’ (a woman who worked in the pits) is also found in Zola’s Germinal.
8. The print room of the Louvre sold reproductions. See letter 35, n. 5, for the etching The bush [1717] by Charles-François Daubigny after Jacob van Ruisdael; cf. Chalcographie 1954, p. 29, no. 848 (which gives the measurements as 36 x 40 cm) and Renié 1999.
[1717]
9. This drawing and its pendant, which Van Gogh mentions later in the letter, are both unknown.
10. It is possible Van Gogh wrote ‘Breton,’ instead of ‘Breton &’.
11. The photographer Robert Jefferson Bingham, who lived and worked in Paris and later in Brussels, was known for his reproductions of art works. The work in question could be Jules Breton’s Women hoeing, 1860 (Omaha, (Nebraska), Joslyn Art Museum), or a replica of this work dating from 1868 (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), with a red sun going down. Exhib. cat. Arras 2002, p. 78 Ill. 1889 [1889].
[1889]
12. Charles Bargue, Exercices au fusain pour préparer à l’étude de l’académie d’après nature. Paris (Goupil & Cie), 1871. The loose-leaf edition contained a series of sixty sample drawings on large sheets (c. 47 x 61 cm); the price printed on the cover of the portfolio was 75 francs. See Chetham 1976, pp. 60-61 and ‘Modèles et ouvrages spéciaux pour l’enseignement des arts du dessin’ in Cat. Goupil 1877.
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