1. The title of Henri Murger’s novel Les buveurs d’eau (1854) refers to a group of (fictional) artists in Paris’s Quartier Latin who have taken this as their name. They believe that genius is something divine, and that an artist is forbidden to earn money through works of art. This is symbolized by an initiation ceremony that ends with the drinking of a glass of water. Each of the three chapters in the book deals with an episode in the life of a painter. The first, Francis, wants to join the ‘Buveurs d’eau’ but is found to be too bourgeois; he is destined to become a mediocre artist. The painter Antoine renounces his love for a young woman in favour of art. The painter Lazare in the last chapter also thinks he must choose between love and vocation, but here the open ending implies that a serious relationship is possible after all.

2. Given that the context is the bohemian life, Van Gogh is more likely to mean the genre painter Henri Charles Antoine Baron than the landscape painter Théodore Baron.

3. There are various painters among the characters in the novels of Honoré de Balzac. The most important are: Joseph Bridau in La rabouilleuse (1842), Pierre Grassou in Pierre Grassou (1839), Dubourdieu and Léon de Lora in Les comédiens sans le savoir (1846), Hippolyte Schinner in La bourse (1832), Théodore de Sommervieux in La maison du chat-qui-pelote (1830), Frenhofer in Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu (1831), and Servin in La vendetta (1830). See Wingfield Scott 1936, pp. 8-13, 275.

4. Claude Lantier is a character in Zola’s novel Le ventre de Paris (1873), which Van Gogh had read a few months before (see letters 245 and 250). Later he is the protagonist in Zola’s L’oeuvre (1886).

Van Gogh’s suspicion that the painter was done ‘from nature’ was right: the figure was partly based on Paul Cézanne. Lantier lives entirely for his work and aspires to a new, contemporary art in which things are shown in their true light. This is the first time that Van Gogh uses the term ‘Impressionism’. Both here and in several later Dutch letters (e.g. 450, 467 and 495) it is evident that he has not yet fully understood the exact meaning of the term. It was only when he moved to Paris that he became aware of the latest developments in painting. After that he used the term in a broader sense than normal; see letter 569, n. 2.

5. Meissonier did several studio scenes in which a painter or draughtsman is seen from behind. Van Gogh probably means The painter (1855), The Cleveland Museum of Art. Ill. 252

. This painting was well known through Bingham’s photo, reproduced in Burty 1866, p. 86 (cf. letter 38, n. 9).

6. Van Gogh must mean A scholar reading, c. 1630 (Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum). Ill. 2011

. It is doubtful whether this is an authentic Rembrandt; the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum attributes the panel to Gerard Dou. See Bruyn 1986, vol. 1, pp. 533-538, no. C15. Van Gogh may have known the scene from the etching De geleerde (The scholar) by William Unger after Rembrandt, which had been in the Kunstkronijk 12 (1871), NS, between pp. 58 and 59. There are two copies of this in the estate (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. nos. p135 and p136).

7. Léon Bonnat, Victor Hugo, 1879 (Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon). Ill. 604

. The portrait was extremely well known and was reproduced several times both separately and in magazines; cf., for example, the print by Valette in Le Monde Illustré 23 (2 August 1879), pp. 72-73.

8. These lines most probably go back to Victor Hugo’s poem La légende des siècles (1859), in which the following passage occurs: ‘I watched him in the funereal mists / As one might see a blackcock keep silent in the gloom’ (Je le considérais dans les vapeurs funèbres / Comme on verrait se taire un coq dans les ténèbres). Ed. Paris 1950, p. 735 (chapter 60). It is not known whether Van Gogh read La légende des siècles; it is possible that he knew these lines – whether or not in the divergent form he quotes – via an intermediate source. He cites the words again in letter 397.

9. The phrase ‘a little general of ’93’ refers to Napoleon Bonaparte, who was made a general in 1793. Van Gogh may be making an allusion to one of the depictions of Napoleon that Meissonier painted, including 1814, The French campaign, 1860-1864 (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) – in the estate there is a typogravure after this (t*866) – and Napoleon i in 1814, 1862 (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum), of which there is also a grisaille. See exhib. cat. Lyon 1993, pp. 200-203, cat. nos. 106-108.

10. Millet’s charcoal drawing Autoportrait à la casquette de laine (Self-portrait with a woollen cap), 1847-1848, included in Sensier’s La vie et l’oeuvre de J.-F. Millet. Ill. 297

. He speaks of a coachman’s cap and describes the portrait as follows: ‘A brownish, dirty-grey jacket; a dense beard; long hair, topped by a woollen cap like a coachman’s, stamped his physiognomy with a character that was immediately astonishing, and recalled the painters of the Middle Ages’ (Un paletot brun, couleur de muraille; une barbe épaisse; de longs cheveux surmontés d’un bonnet de laine comme celui des cochers, imprimaient à sa physionomie un caractère qui étonnait d’abord et qui rappelait les peintres du moyen âge). Sensier 1881, pp. 100-101.

11. For this Rijswijkseweg, see letter 11, n. 15.

12. For this ‘Copal crayon’, see letter 287, n. 12.

13. Seven impressions of the lithograph ‘At eternity’s gate’ (F 1662 / JH 268

) are known. Two were in Theo’s estate; it is not known which one was enclosed with this letter. Cf. Van Heugten and Pabst 1995, pp. 52-56, 93, cat. no. 5.

14. Cf. 1 Cor. 13:12.

15. This expression may derive from the phrase ‘And that something on high has been disturbed’ (Et qu’on a dérangé quelque chose là-haut) from the poem ‘Patrie’ in L’art d’être grand-père (1877) by Victor Hugo. See Hugo 1972, vol. 2, p. 559. Van Gogh uses the expression again in letters 294, 333, 396, 397, 401, 403 and 405. For the related expression ‘un rayon d’en haut’, see letter 143, n. 5.

16. The words ‘At the same time... the worms’ were added later by Van Gogh.

17. Van Gogh probably means Jozef Israëls, Old friends

, which he cited earlier in connection with Millet: see letter 211, n. 13.

18. The song of the slave in Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s cabin. See Harriet Beecher Stowe, La cabane de l’oncle Tom, ou la vie des nègres en Amérique. Translated by Alfred Michiels. Paris 1853, p. 440 (‘La victoire’, chapter 38). The book was available in several French translations. Soth thinks it ‘almost certain’ that Van Gogh knew the translation by Louis Enault (Paris, Hachette 1853). See Soth 1994, pp. 156-162, especially pp. 156-157.

19. Theo had sent a description of Montmartre before, to which Vincent responded enthusiastically several times: see letters 260-262. He returns to the present description in letter 295.

21. Borrowed from Thomas Carlyle, Past and present. Ed. London 1897, p. 197 (‘Labour’, chapter 11). Also cited in letters 294 and 327 (in translation).

22. Read: ‘corda’. For this expression, see letter 143, n. 49.

23. Jozef Israëls, Jules or Emile Adélard Breton and Charles Degroux.

24. In his letter Theo must have acceded to Vincent’s request in letter 283 to return to a work by Daumier mentioned previously (not identified) which, the rest of the letter suggests, was for sale.