1. Van Gogh had promised to send drawings in letter 437, which dates from around the middle of March 1884.

a. Probably means: ‘zeikerd, zaniker’ (bore, moaner) (in l. 196 the word ‘gezanik’ (moaning) is used synonymously); cf. also the compound ‘zeurpiet’ (nag).

b. Read: ‘Waar’ (which, that).

2. Cf. Exod. 4:10.

3. A common expression among artists at the time. Carel Vosmaer, for instance, wrote in Amazone. The Hague 1880: ‘There was no doubt, this example is the very finest. Everything that people had admired in the other one was here to an even higher degree. Something of the same can be observed in marble statues as in paintings when the colours in them do not appear as pigments, but the substance of them vanishes and the impression is that of life or reality, in other words when the physical media do not stand between the work of art and the viewer, but the mind of the creating artist speaks directly to that of the viewer. Then painters say that a painting is ‘beyond the paint’. Something of the kind also occurs with sculptures’ (p. 162).

4. Alphonse Daudet’s novel Numa Roumestan – Moeurs parisiennes (1881) is about the political figure Numa Roumestan, who attained the ministry thanks in part to his skill in rhetoric. Oratorical tirades are not rendered literally, but they are described (in chapter 20): ‘On the balcony, the orator was working himself up, uttering long outpourings of which all that could be heard were the first words of each sentence, accentuated in the southern manner: “My soul… My blood… Morality… Religion… Country…”, given emphasis by the cheers of that audience, made in his image’. (Sur le balcon, l’orateur s’exaltait, arrivait aux grandes effusions dont on n’entendait que les départs accentués à la méridionale, “Mon âme... Mon sang... Morale... Religion... Patrie...” soulignés par les hurrahs de cet auditoire fait à son image). See Daudet 1986-1994, vol. 3, p. 214.

5. Van Gogh is probably referring to a painting. Cf. with regard to the subject Van Rappard’s (undated) drawing Weaver (private collection). See exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1974, p. 83, cat. no. 99.

6. See for Old women in the West-Terschelling home : letter 416, n. 4.

7. Hubert von Herkomer set up his Art School in Bushey in 1883. A week later The Graphic reported on the 34 students who would be given intensive training, and what Herkomer had in mind with the school: ‘All of these are able to draw or paint fairly well from the life, and for the next nine months their powers will be tested in a somewhat severe and continuous manner’. On Herkomer’s attitude towards their individual development, the piece continued: ‘The style of work, Mr Herkomer said, he wanted his students to form for themselves, and he implored them not to strive to imitate him; they might be eccentric at first if they liked – rather that than to be timid, and amateurish, and niggling, but they must produce artistic work’. [Anonymous], ‘Opening of the Herkomer Art School’, The Graphic 28 (1 December 1883), p. 539.

8. Van Gogh probably derived this saying, which means that great minds do not imitate, from Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare. See Hugo 1864, p. 383, and exhib. cat. Vienna 1996, p. 32.

9. This painting of a girl winding thread is not known.

10. Van Gogh made several paintings of individual weavers during this period; it is not possible to say which one he means here.

11. The villages of Son and Breugel, about 5 km to the north-west of Nuenen.

12. There were all sorts of books about national costumes on the market; for example C.P.E. Robidé van der Aa, Nederlandsche kleederdragten. Een geschenk voor knapen en meisjes (Amsterdam 1839) and Kleederdragten en typen der bewoners van Nederland (Amsterdam [1865]).

13. Exposition de l’oeuvre de Corot (Exhib. cat. Paris 1875-2). Van Gogh went to see the exhibition in May 1875 (see letter 34). The last remark may well be an echo of what Burty wrote: ‘his work was carried out as though imbued with every noble thought that it evoked’ (son oeuvre s’accomplissait comme imprégnée de toutes les nobles pensées qu’il évoquait). See exhib. cat. Paris 1875-2, p. 19.

14. Cf. for a cemetery by Van Rappard: letter 344, n. 8.

15. An allusion to the first verse of P.A. de Génestet’s poem ‘Waar en hoe’ (Where and how):

See De Génestet 1869, vol. 1, p. 271. The publisher Tiele also quoted the first two lines in his ‘Levensschets van P.A. de Génestet’, which precedes De dichtwerken (vol. 1, p. 47). It is possible that they had meanwhile attained the status of a maxim. Van Gogh himself put inverted commas around the word ‘learned’ to produce the desired effect. This enabled him to add extra force to the variation he devised, and to criticise his fellow painters, the dealers, collectors and connoisseurs by comparing them to pseudo-scholars.