1. Fish-drying barn (F 940 / JH 154 ).

2. Theo was probably sent Carpenter’s yard and laundry (F 944 / JH 153 ) (which ended up in the Enthoven collection in The Hague, which means that it must have been sold later, but no details about this are known); however, perhaps there was a third, unknown drawing of the same subject. The drawing Carpenter’s yard and laundry (F 939 / JH 150 ), done with pencil, pen and brush and heightened with white, went to Uncle Cor; Van Gogh wrote that he had worked on it with the pen; see also n. 4.

3. Van Gogh mentions this location more than once; see letter 11. The Rijkswijk meadows can be seen in the background of the drawing Carpenter’s yard and laundry.

4. Carpenter’s yard and laundry (F 939 / JH 150 ). It is stated in letters 231 and 232 that Van Rappard admired both drawings.

5. Sien’s mother’s house (F 942/ JH 147 ).

6. Theo had met Van Rappard earlier in Paris; see letter 160, n. 6.

7. Frederick Barnard was the most productive illustrator for Dickens’s Household Edition: he did drawings for 10 of the 22 volumes. The only work that he illustrated together with Luke Fildes and the brothers Edward Gurden and George Dalziel was The mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), with a total of 30 engravings. See Kitton, 1899, pp. 222-223. Cf. for the Household Edition letters 133, n. 53.

8. By ‘parts of old London’ Van Gogh may mean typical scenes of London (working-class) life or the topographical backgrounds depicted in Fildes’s Up the river (engraved by Charles Roberts) and the anonymous Durdles cautions Mr. Sapsea against boasting. Ill. 1920 and Ill. 1921 . See The mystery of Edwin Drood. Reprinted pieces and other stories. London [1879], facing the title page, relating to p. 109, and p. 57.

9. See letter 211 for the amount mentioned and letter 214 for the payment by Uncle Cor.

10. Albrecht Dürer, The draughtsman of the reclining woman, Ill. 85 . In Unterweisung der Messung mit dem Zirkel und Richtscheit. Das Lehrbuch der Malerei (1525) Dürer studied perspective and introduced a frame in which horizontal and vertical threads placed at equal intervals together formed a grid of squares. The woodcut was also known as a separate print (H271/B149). It was no doubt Armand Cassagne’s Guide de l’alphabet du dessin (1880) that put Van Gogh on the track of the perspective frame, a variant of the ‘cadre rectificateur’. See Dürer. Der schriftlicher Nachlass. Ed. Hans Rupprich. 3 vols. Berlin 1956-1969, vol. 2, p. 391; and cat. Amsterdam 1996, pp. 18-21.

11. For the ‘Geel affair’, see letter 185.

12. For Van Gogh’s print collection, which has come down to us incomplete, see exhib. cat. Amsterdam 2003, pp. 99-112. The annotations below cover only what is now in the estate.

13. In the estate there are several sheets from the series Irish sketches by among others Michael FitzGerald Turf market in the South of Ireland (t*546), and Richard Caton Woodville (ii) A fisherman’s cabin in Connemara (t*182) which had been in The Illustrated London News 76 (24 January 1880), p. 84 and 76 (13 March 1880), p. 249.

14. There is only one print after Bodmer in the estate, namely Le cerf mort (The dead stag), taken from L’Illustration 59 (2 March 1872), p. 137.

15. There are no prints by Hector Giacomelli in the estate.

16. In the estate there are 21 prints after Auguste André Lançon, mainly from La Vie Moderne, L’Illustration and Le Monde Illustré.

17. For Millet’s series The labours of the fields , see letter 156, n. 1.

18. In the estate are Emile Adélard Breton’s Cimetière de Courrières (Churchyard at Courrières) from La Vie Moderne 1 (20 September 1879), p. 373, and Jules Breton’s Le soir (Salon de 1880) (The evening (Salon of 1880)) from both La Vie Moderne 2 (7 August 1880), pp. 504-505, and Le Monde Illustré 24 (28 August 1880), p. 117.

19. There are no prints by François Nicolas Auguste Feyen-Perrin in the estate.

20. For Herkomer’s prints in the estate, see letter 199.

21. In the estate there are three prints by George Henry Boughton: Verregnet, Genrebild aus der Bretagne (Rain-soaked, genre scene from Brittany) from Über Land und Meer (t*822); The poisoned cup from The Graphic 9 (20 June 1874), p. 600 (t*494); and an untitled engraving (t*1487), whose source is unknown.

22. There are two prints after George Clausen in the estate: the wood engraving Fisher folk in church: Island of Urk, Zuyder Zee, from The Graphic 19 (24 May 1879), p. 516, and the photogravure ‘The night brings rest’. La nuit ramène le repos (Nord Holland) (source unknown) after a drawing by J. Watkins (t*474 and t*473).

23. There are 25 prints by Paul Gavarni in the estate.

24. In the estate there are six prints after Edmond Morin (the first two are explicitly mentioned in letter 309): Roeiwedstrijd in Engeland (Boat race in England), engraved by Henry Linton, from De Hollandsche Illustratie 1 (1864-1865), eerste helft, no. 14, p. 112. Ill. 1922 . (t*314); De beroemde kastanjeboom van 20 maart (The famous chestnut tree of 20 March), engraved by E. Roevens, from De Hollandsche Illustratie 1 (1864-1865), tweede helft, no. 14, p. 108. Ill. 1923 . (t*468); Les grandes étapes de l’électricité (The great steps in the development of electricity) by Henry Linton, from Le Monde Illustré 25 (22 October 1881) (t*635); Les dieux tombés, Hercule (The fallen gods, Hercules) by Fortuné Louis Méaulle, from Le Monde Illustré 26 (28 January 1882) (t*649); L’électricité, suppression du temps, de la nuit, de la distance (Electricity, the suppression of time, night and distance) by Auguste Louis Lepère, from Le Monde Illustré 25 (22 October 1881) (t*633), and Godsdienstige bijeenkomst in onderaards gewelf (A religious gathering in an underground vault) from an unknown Dutch magazine (t*467).

25. There are 35 Doré prints in the estate.

26. In the estate there are dozens of prints by George du Maurier, principally from Punch.

27. In the estate there is just one print by Charles Samuel Keene, from Punch (t*989), although – when talking in July 1888 about the number of sheets by Keene he thought he had – Van Gogh writes: ‘there were a good 200’ (letter 642).

28. There are 42 prints by Edward Linley Sambourne in the estate, all from Punch.

29. There are 95 prints by Sir John Tenniel, all from Punch.

30. Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, was a statesman and the prime minister in 1868, and from 1874 to 1880. Any number of caricatures of him appeared in Punch.

31. In the estate there are 14 prints by John Leech, all from Punch.

32. By ‘reprint’ Van Gogh may mean the five-part series Pictures of life and character... from the collection of Mr. Punch which had appeared in London in the years 1854, 1857, 1860, 1863 and 1869 (BLL). In 1869 the London publisher Bradbury, Evans & Co. advertised more than ten works illustrated by Leech; the price was 12 shillings per volume. See The Publishers’ Circular and General Record of British and Foreign Literature. London (8 December 1869), p. 835.

33. In the estate there are 54 prints by Barnard from prior to June 1882, most of which come from The Illustrated London News (volumes 1874-1882).

34. In the estate there are four prints by Fildes, all from The Graphic, one of which is from The Graphic Portfolio (see nn. 47 and 48 below).

35. In the estate there are eleven prints by Charles Green, nine from The Graphic and two from The Illustrated London News.

36. For ‘Album Boetzel’, see letter 234, n. 16.

37. The series Heads of the people drawn from life was in The Graphic. From it Van Gogh definitely had Hubert von Herkomer’s The agricultural labourer – Sunday, no. 2 in the series, in The Graphic 12 (9 October 1875), p. 360. Ill. 170 . (t*184), and The coastguardsman, not numbered, in The Graphic 20 (20 September 1879), Supplement, not paginated. Ill. 1924 . (t*94). See exhib. cat. London 1992, p. 139, cat. nos. 90-91; on the series Werness 1972, pp. 117-121, who also discusses The brewer’s drayman, no. 4 in the series, in The Graphic 12 (20 November 1875), p. 508. For the series, see also letter 293.

38. There are four prints with opium smokers in the estate: William Bazett Murray, Opium-smoking at the East End of London, from The Illustrated London News 65 (1 August 1874), p. 101 (Ill. 1925 ); John Charles Dollman, London sketches – An opium den at the East End, from The Graphic 22 (23 October 1880), p. 401 (Ill. 1926 ); Gustave Doré, Opium smoking – The Lascar’s room in “Edwin Drood”, engraved by Albert Doms, from a French magazine (Ill. 1927 ), and Auguste Lançon, Les chinois fumeurs d’opium à Londres (The Chinese opium smokers in London), from La Vie Moderne 2 (16 October 1880), no. 42, p. 665 (Ill. 1928 ). t*304, t*147, t*169 and t*1348 respectively.

39. Van Gogh had the print The morning toilet, Seven Dials by William Bazett Murray, from The Illustrated London News 65 (5 September 1874), p. 232. Ill. 1191 . (t*116). Seven Dials was a poor area in London.

40. Rotten Row is a road in Hyde Park in London.

41. An allusion to Dickens’ novel A tale of two cities, which is set in London and Paris.

42. For Holl’s prints in the estate, see letter 199.

43. For Walker’s prints in the estate, see letter 199.

44. In the estate there are 52 prints from prior to June 1882 by Charles Paul Renouard, most from L’Illustration (1881-1882) and a few from The Graphic (1879).

45. In the estate there are two prints by Adolf Menzel, both from unidentified magazines: Le tabacks-collegium (The Smoking Parliament) and Le vieux Frederic (Frederic le Grand) (Old Frederick (Frederick the Great)) (t*821 and t*463).

46. In the estate there are five prints by Howard Pyle from Harper’s Weekly, one from The Graphic and one from The Illustrated London News.

47. The Graphic published The Graphic Portfolio more than once: in 1875 it was a selection of 50 wood engravings from the most influential wood-engraved illustrated publications of the 1870s. An advertisement drew attention to this splendid publication ‘on thick plate paper’. See The Graphic (25 December 1875), p. 3. Van Gogh had among others Before dinner – the march past by George du Maurier from The Graphic Portfolio of 1871, and Houseless and hungry by Fildes and The rival grandpas and grandmas by George du Maurier from The Graphic Portfolio of 1877.

48. For Fildes’ Houseless and hungry , see letter 199, n. 8.

49. Van Gogh says – and he repeats it in letter 267 – that he has a small edition of Menzel’s illustrations for the Geschichte Friedrichs des Großen. The editions traced (see letter 133, n. 19) cannot really be described as small: the early German editions are all about 16 x 26 cm; the Dutch edition of 1843-1845 is 15.5 x 24.5 cm. But in 1861 and 1867 ‘kleine Volksausgaben’ (small popular editions) were published in Germany. See Elfried Bock, Adolf Menzel. Verzeichnis seines graphischen Werkes. Berlin 1923, p. 286.