1. These were three photographs of the drawings Peat diggers in the dunes (F 1031 / JH 363 ); Potato grubbers (F 1034 / JH 372 ) and Sower (F 1035 / JH 374 ): see letter 362, n. 7.

2. Van Gogh thinks that the drawings listed here, which he had mentioned before, could also be photographed. The first drawing would have had the same subject as the sketch The sandpit at Dekkersduin near The Hague (F 1028 / JH 367), which Vincent had sent to Theo with letter 348. The drawings, which Van Gogh also calls ‘team of workmen labouring’, are mentioned in letters 348-357.

3. This may be the watercolour Weed burners (F 1035a / JH 375). The drawing is mentioned in letter 361.

4. Van Gogh made two – unknown – versions of a drawing with a dung-heap; they are mentioned in letters 350-357.

5. This drawing of a potato-grubbing old man is not known; it is mentioned in letter 358.

6. This drawing of coal loaders is not known; it is mentioned in letters 354-357.

7. The ‘large drawing’ (l. 118) with women mending nets is not known. With this subject Van Gogh goes back to Women mending nets in the dunes (F 7 / JH 178 ) done a year earlier.

8. These two larger drawings with compositions of dune workers are not known. One of them is the ‘row of diggers’ that he had shown to Tersteeg (letter 356).

9. This emphasis on ‘doing’ would have been inspired by what Van Gogh had read about ‘action’ in Carlyle: see letters 356, n. 7 and 312, n. 2.

10. For the origin of this borrowing from the book Petites misères de la vie humaine by Old Nick and Grandville, see letter 178, n. 6.

11. These paintings of ‘a bit of sea’, ‘a potato field’, ‘a field with women mending nets’ and a man planting cabbage in a potato field are not known.

12. The unknown drawing of women repairing nets mentioned earlier (see n. 7 above).

a. Read: ‘Niet wel’ (Unwell).

13. Prints of the lithographs drawn in autographic ink. Vincent must have sent his brother the lithographs Weed burners (F 1660 / JH 377 ) and Gardener near a gnarled apple tree (F 1659 / JH 379 ). See Van Heugten and Pabst 1995, pp. 61-73, 95-96 and exhib. cat. Vienna 1996, pp. 148-150, cat. nos. 46-47.

14. The fact that Theo had suggested to Vincent that he should become a painter or draughtsman was mentioned in letter 214.

15. Van Gogh first wrote ‘respect’ (‘achting’) instead of ‘sympathy’.

16. It is possible that this reads ‘nu’ (now) instead of ‘me’ (me).

17. Five and four impressions of Gardener by an apple tree (F 1659 / JH 379 ) and Burning weeds (F 1660 / JH 377 ) respectively are known; some of them are indeed poorly printed. See Van Heugten and Pabst 1995, pp. 61-73, 95-96, cat. nos. 7-8.

18. These three studies by Breitner, Charge of the hussars , a drunkard and a flower market, were mentioned in letter 361.

19. For studies of street women by Breitner, cf. the sheet Studies of women (Otterlo, Kröller-Müller Museum). See Hefting 1970, cat. no. 225-d.

20. Two paintings by Breitner with this subject are known from the period 1881-1883. The first is Een hoefsmid te Brabant (A farrier in Brabant) (private collection), Ill. 633 , which was shown in 1883 at the Living Masters exhibition at Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam. In view of the date, this was probably the work that Van Gogh saw. The second is De hoefsmid (aan de Haringkade te ’s-Gravenhage) (The farrier (on Haringkade in The Hague)) (private collection). Ill. 2114 . This dates from 1881. Cf. Hefting 1970, cat. nos. 33, 35.

21. Van Gogh knew the brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt through their book Gavarni, l’homme et l’oeuvre (see letter 174). Their novel Soeur Philomène (1861) is about the orphan Marie Gaucher, who has to spend her adolescence in a convent, where she undergoes religious raptures and self-chastisement. After being rejected by her first love Henri, she goes to work in a hospital as Nurse Philomène. She begins a relationship with assistant doctor Barnier, but their happiness is shattered when his ex-love is admitted to the hospital and dies. Barnier then commits suicide.