2. Van Gogh had visited Breitner in the Municipal Hospital between 21 and 28 March 1882; see letter 214.

3. During the winter course of 1882-1883 Breitner taught freehand and ornament drawing for 16 hours a week in the 2nd class of the Academy of Fine Arts and Technical Science in Rotterdam. He gave his first lesson on 5 September 1882. See Hefting 1970, p. 49 and Brieven Breitner 1970, pp. 36, 38.

4. This letter from Van Rappard is mentioned in letter 275, which was an answer to it.

5. For this refused painting, see letter 268, n. 11.

6. On Van Rappard’s work at the Institute for the Blind in Utrecht in the autumn of 1882: exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1974, pp. 79-80.

7. This unknown ‘scratch of the potato market on Noordwal’ was mentioned earlier in letter 261. In that letter of 9 September Van Gogh literally wrote: ‘where I can express the bustle of workmen I see on the street or outdoors’.

8. It is not known which watercolours these were. There is a good chance that one of them was Potato market (F 1091 / JH 252) (cf. letter 261).

9. For this Christmas print, Stirring the pudding in Punch, see letter 276, n. 1.

10. This must have been in July 1881 when Theo was in Etten; the brothers would have visited Uncle Vincent van Gogh in Princenhage – he was not very well at that time: see letters 168 and 170.

11. Jules and Edmond de Goncourt characterize Daumier as Gavarni’s ‘rival’ in Gavarni, l’homme et l’oeuvre (Goncourt 1873, pp. 230, 400).

12. For Daumier, Physiologie du buveur – Les quatre âges (The physiology of the drinker – The four ages), see letter 267, n. 33. Van Gogh has one drinker too many.

13. For Daumier’s print of Ferragus

, see letter 274, n. 3.

14. In the period January 1857-July 1857, Charles Degroux provided twelve illustrations with several Daumier-like figures for the satirical weekly Uylenspiegel, Journal des Ebats Artistiques et Littéraires. They are all reproduced in exhib. cat. Ypres 1995, pp. 149-152. See also letter 273, n. 37. On this magazine: Nathalie Eeckman, Uylenspiegel. Journal des ébats artistiques et littéraires (1856-1860). Rôle et conceptions littéraires. Louvain 1985.

15. For Félicien Rops’s illustrations for the magazine Uylenspiegel, see Maurice Exteens, L’Oeuvre gravé et lithographié de Félicien Rops. 5 vols. Paris 1928. Van Gogh copied Rops’s Souvenirs. En attendant la confession (Recollections. Waiting for confession) from Uylenspiegel (29 March 1857), p. 4: Old woman asleep (After Rops) (F XVII / JH -). See cat. Amsterdam 1996, pp. 51-52, cat. no. 5 and ill. 5a.

16. Van Gogh had earlier expressed his regret at having given away wood engravings in letter 267; cf. n. 8 there.