1. Theo was 26 on 1 May 1883. His father also wished him many happy returns, ‘You have been a spring flower for us, dear Theo! And long may you be so!’, and he wondered, ‘How is Vincent getting on? Oh, I think so often of him, but fortunately his work keeps him occupied. And you are such a help to him, may you see the fruits! How will you spend your birthday? People won’t forget you’ (FR 2243, 29 April 1883).

2. Theo sold work by these painters.

3. Charles Baude made the engraving Service divin au bord de la mer (Finlande) (Religious service on the beach (Finland)), published in Le Monde Illustré 26 (15 July 1882), pp. 40-41 (Ill. 91

), after Albert Gustaf Aristides Edelfelt’s painting Service religieux dans l’archipel de Nyland (Religious service in the Nyland archipelago), 1882 (Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts). Van Gogh is mistaken about Edelfelt’s nationality: he was Finnish.

4. Here Van Gogh is criticizing the fashionable works of the so-called Orientalists. Perhaps he was thinking of Un marchand d’armes au Caire (A Cairene armourer) (private collection) by Jean Léon Gérôme, which was also available in reproductions at the times. See Ackerman 1986, p. 226, cat. no. 194, and Cat. Goupil 1877, p. 52, cat. no. 897.

5. This drawing of a woman gathering peat is not known.

6. Probably the drawing Old man, kneeling in prayer (F 1027 / JH 354

7. Van Gogh is wrong about the nationality of Wilhelm Maria Hubertus Leibl, who was born in Cologne in Germany. He borrowed the details that follow – namely the fact that Leibl was self-taught and that his painting caused a great stir, even in Paris – from what K. Raupp wrote in the Illustrirte Zeitung 79 (1 July 1882), pp. 9, 12 (cf. n. 8 below).

8. A print after Wilhelm Leibl’s Die drei Frauen in der Kirche (The three women in the church), 1882 (Hamburg, Kunsthalle). In the estate there is the engraving by Hugo Kaeseberg & Kaspar Erhardt Oertel from the Illustrirte Zeitung 79 (1 July 1882), p. 14. The caption reads: ‘Aus der Internationalen Kunstausstellung in Wien: in der Kirche. Gemälde von Wilhelm Leibl’. Ill. 1043

(t*777). Cf. Illustrierter Katalog der ersten Internationalen Kunst-Ausstellung im Künstlerhause. 2nd ed. Vienna 1882, p. 232, no. 97. The women, painted in a church at Dachau, are wearing traditional Bavarian costume.

9. Van Gogh most probably means Karl (Charles) Gussow, who studied and worked in Germany (no painter called Paul de Gassow is known). Karl Gussow was represented at the International Exhibition in London in 1874 by the realistic ‘The spectators’, as is evident from The Graphic 10 (24 October 1874), p. 394; the wood engraving after this work by Eugène Froment is in the estate. Ill. 2094

. (t*435). Both below the print and in the commentary Gussow’s name is misspelt as ‘Gassow’, which may explain Van Gogh’s mistake. Cf. also letter 311, n. 6.

10. Van Gogh had written about this in letter 337. These letters (see also later in the present letter) contain the first signs of conflicts with Sien’s family, which become exacerbated in the coming months and contribute to the final break between them.

12. It is clear from this that Van Gogh had read Zola’s novel L’assommoir (1877), although letter 260 of 3 September 1882 had already suggested that. The novel is set among the poor of Paris, and Zola portrays their cheerless and hard life. The main character is the humble washerwoman Gervaise Macquart, who is abandoned with two children by her lover Auguste Lantier. She marries a labourer, but he has an accident and is unable to work, which drives him to drink. Lantier, now a drunk too, comes back to her but drinks himself to death. By then the naturally cheerful, hard-working and good-natured Gervaise is inwardly broken and she also resorts to alcohol, ending up as a streetwalker.