1. Ulysse Louis Auguste Butin, La mise à l’eau (Launching the boat), in Paris Illustré 1 (June 1883), p. [2]. Ill. 665 [665].
[665]
2. Van Gogh wrote about the potato grubbers in letter 356.
3. This drawing, Potato grubbers (F 1034 / JH 372 [2442]), is only known from a photograph. It corresponds with the letter sketch with the same title (F - / JH 373) later in the letter. See also letters 356 and 362.
[2442]
4. The painting is most probably L’attente – Le samedi à Villerville, Calvados (Waiting – Saturday at Villerville, Calvados) (present whereabouts unknown). A photograph of the work was published in L’Illustration 43 (21 March 1885), pp. 189-190. Ill. 664 [664]. The etching by Butin is ill. 3105 [3105].
[664] [3105]
5. Ulysse Butin, Enterrement d’un marin à Villerville (Calvados) (The burial of a sailor at Villerville, Calvados), 1878 (Paris, Musée d’Orsay). Ill. 2102 [2102].
[2102]
6. Bernardus Blommers, Novembre (November) (private collection) was shown at the Salon of 1883. As is evident from letter 361, Van Gogh knew the illustration in F.-G. Dumas, Catalogue illustré du Salon. Paris 1883, p. 47. Ill. 592 [592].
[592]
7. Van Gogh evidently continued working on all the drawings he had started in the previous month in a large, horizontal format. Apart from the latest of the Potato grubbers [2442], which was mentioned above, they were the following six: Peat diggers in the dunes (F 1031 / JH 363 [2437]), a sand quarry (‘workmen labouring’), two versions of the dung-heap, a scene at the coal yard at Rijnspoor station and a row of diggers; only Peat diggers and Potato grubbers are known.
[2442] [2437]
8. In this period Van Gogh combined printing ink with other black drawing materials, one example being the large sheet of peat-cutters in the dunes (F 1031 / JH 363 [2437]). In March and April 1883 he also ‘experimented with a combination of printing ink and oil paint. As yet it is unclear which drawings are the result of this technique, assuming any have survived’. Cat. Amsterdam 1996, p. 29.
[2437]
9. It is not known which drawing by Mauve this is; the photograph is also mentioned in letter 122. The visit probably took place at Mauve’s studio on Alexanderplein in The Hague.
10. Relations between Van Gogh and Mauve had deteriorated since early March 1882 because he was living with Sien; see letters 209 ff.
top