1. This phrasing indicates that Theo sent extra money; this is confirmed by a remark in letter 323, ll. 66-67. See also Date.
a. Means: ‘om haar karakter te vormen’ (to shape her character).
2. A year before Van Gogh had noted these words from Jules Michelet’s La femme (in a slightly different form) below the drawing Sorrow [2365]: see letter 216, n. 3.
[2365]
3. For this pronouncement by Theo, see letter 291, l. 265.
4. Honoré de Balzac, Petites misères de la vie conjugale (1846) consists of a number of sketches of married life and is divided into two parts. The first focuses on man, in the person of Adolphe, and the second on woman, represented by Caroline. Balzac describes how married people sink ever deeper into trivia and superficiality, and how expectations at the beginning of a marriage end in disappointment.
5. Borrowed from Jules Michelet, L’amour, see letter 184, n. 7.
6. It has not been possible to trace where Michelet advises women to read Thomas a Kempis. For L’imitation de Jésus-Christ, see letter 38, n. 5.
7. For Ary Scheffer’s Christus Consolator [1771], see letter 85, n. 7.
[1771]
b. Means: ‘schraler’ (meagre). This is not a question of size; both editions have 139 pages.
8. Théophile Gautier, La nature chez elle. Paris (Auguste Marc, Imprimerie de L’Illustration), 1870, with 37 etchings by Karl Bodmer (50 francs). Various excerpts appeared in L’Illustration between 1869 and 1872.
Twelve years later La nature chez elle was published. Dessins originaux de K. Bodmer reproduits en fac-similé. Paris (G. Charpentier) 1882. It seems unlikely that Van Gogh’s criticism was provoked by this edition, since apart from the title page it is identical to the previous one. Only the first edition, however, mentions L’Illustration on the title page. These are the only two editions known from before 1883. See Claudine Lacoste, ‘Oeuvres de Théophile Gautier annoncées dans la bibliographie de la France de 1830 à 1935’, Bulletin de la Société Théophile Gautier, no. 11. Montpellier 1989, p. 171; and Charles Spoelenberch de Lovenjoul, Histoire des oeuvres de Théophile Gautier. 2 vols. Paris 1887, vol. 2, p. 388, no. 2275.
9. Which heads of fishermen with a sou’wester these are is not known; Van Gogh drew a number of them.
10. Sien had given birth on 2 July 1882: see letter 242.
11. Jules Joseph Augustin Laurens went on an expedition to Turkey and Persia and brought back thousands of drawings, which were published. He drew illustrations for L’Illustration and Le Magasin Pittoresque.
12. In 1877 Jean Paul Laurens had been awarded a medal for his painting L´état-major autrichien devant le corps de Marceau (The Austrian general staff gathered around Marceau’s body) (Kyoto, Sumitomo Collection). Goupil published the photogravure Mort de Marceau (Death of Marceau) in Eugène Montrosier, Les artistes modernes, part 3. Paris 1882, p. 4. Charles Courtry made an etching after the painting, as Van Gogh says. The photogravure is printed here because the only copy known to us (in the Cabinet des Estampes in Paris) cannot be found, Ill. 733 [733]. Cf. Béraldi 1885-1892, p. 64, no. 38; Eugène Verón in L’Art 4 (1878), vol. 3, pp. 215-216 and Jean-Paul Laurens 1838-1921. Peintre d’histoire. Paris 1997, p. 38. A general under the Republic, Marceau was attacked by General Hotze and shot by a rifleman in 1796.
[733]
13. For Old Christmas from the sketchbook of Washington Irving [2060] and Bracebridge Hall from the sketchbook of Washington Irving [2059], see letter 309, n. 21.
[2060] [2059]
14. See letter 214, n. 9.
15. George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch. A study of provincial life (1871) is set in the town of Middlemarch in the first half of the nineteenth century. The ramifications of the marriage of young Dr. Lydgate to the beautiful, but superficial Rosamond Vincy form the main plot. Like this couple, the many other characters seek compromise in everything and abandon their ideals. Van Gogh may have been reading the novel for some time; he quoted from it in letter 294.
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