1. This tower could be seen from the parsonage garden. Altogether fifteen works showing the tower with the churchyard around it are known; they were done between December 1883 and May 1885. See exhib. cat. ’s-Hertogenbosch 1987 and De Brouwer 2000. This is probably The old church tower at Nuenen with a ploughman (F 34 / JH 459 ), cf. letter 440, n. 9.

2. We cannot say for certain exactly which pen-and-ink drawings he is referring to here; cf. letter 430, n. 1.

3. Aloysius O’Kelly, Departure of Irish emigrants at Clifden, County Galway, engraved by William James Palmer, in The Illustrated London News 83 (21 July 1883), pp. 68-69. Ill. 1208 .

4. Alfred Edward Emslie, At work in a woollen factory, engraved by Eugène Froment, in The Illustrated London News 83 (25 August 1883), p. 181. Van Gogh’s copy is in the estate. Ill. 812 (t*150).

5. Charles Stanley Reinhart, For those in peril upon the sea, engraved by Charles Roberts, in the Christmas issue of The Graphic 1883, p. 30. Ill. 1255 .

6. Van Gogh had been familiar with Jules Breton’s poetry for some time. He had read the collection Les champs et la mer (1875), which he had sent Theo in December 1875 (see letters 34 and 61). Not long after this he copied out more poems from it for Van Rappard. See letter 435.

7. Les humbles and Promenades et intérieurs (Humble folk and Walks and interiors) are chapter headings in Poesies de François Coppée (Coppée 1880).

8. Van Rappard worked on his painting Sounding the vespers (present whereabouts unknown) in the winter of 1883-1884. Ill. 2120 . The work was exhibited at the National Exhibition (Nationale Tentoonstelling) in Utrecht (cat. no. 103) in March 1884. See exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1974, p. 86, cat. no. 108.

9. Van Gogh jotted this postscript on the back of the envelope.