1. Letter sketch C, The poor and money (F - / JH 223), was done after the watercolour with the same title, F 970 / JH 222 .

2. The lottery office of the brothers Cornelis Josephus and Jacobus Wilhelmus Mooijman was at Spuistraat 17 (Adresboek 1882).

3. The text ‘HEDEN TREKKING Staats Loterij’ (State Lottery draw today) is in both the letter sketch and the watercolour.

4. Church pew with worshippers (F 967 / JH 225 ); letter sketch A (F - / JH 226) shows part of this.

a. Variant of ‘klein’.

5. The church meant is most probably the Bethlehemskerk, the ‘church of the poor’ behind Slijkeinde – this whole district was sometimes known as Geest. See exhib. cat. The Hague 1990, pp. 48, 52, 171. For the name ‘diakoniemannetje’, see letter 267, n. 20.

6. For the terms ‘orphan man’ and ‘orphan woman’, see letter 268, n. 12.

7. In choosing this subject Van Gogh may have been influenced by a print after Charles Degroux’s The paupers’ pew which he had: see letters 228 and 245.

8. Possibly Old man wearing a blouse, sitting with a pipe (F 1046 / JH 282).

9. This small sketch of the back of the head of Van Gogh’s model Zuyderland appears to have been copied from a drawing of the old man seen from the back; see letter 268, n. 13.

b. Means: ‘nauwsluitende, korte jasjes zonder panden’.