3. ‘But ... “act and create”’ (‘Maar ... “agir-créer”’) was added later; ‘agir-créer’ is taken from the passage in Zola’s Au bonheur des dames that Van Gogh had copied out in letter 464.

4. This view derives from what Van Gogh had read in Blanc’s Grammaire des arts du dessin. See exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1993, p. 60.

5. Portier knew the drawing The potato eaters (F 1226 / JH 736) and the lithograph The potato eaters (F 1661 / JH 737

6. See also letter 489 for the recommendation to present the relatively dark paintings against a gold background. In Les maîtres d’autrefois, which Van Gogh had read not long before this (letter 450), Fromentin observed that Ruisdael’s The mill at Wijk bij Duurstede , composed of ‘deep browns and sombre slate-grey colours’ (bruns foncés et de couleurs ardoisées sombres) with a ‘single glimmer in the centre of the picture’ (seule lueur au centre du tableau) looked so ‘marvellous in gold’ (merveilleux dans l’or) (see Fromentin 1902, chapter 7, p. 255; Fromentin’s italics).

a. Read: ‘Fond’ (ground).

7. Anton Kerssemakers; referred to later in the letter as ‘my friend’.

8. Van Gogh did not use white of egg, however, he used resin varnish – he probably coloured this ‘heightening varnish’ (to bring up the duller areas) with bitumen. See exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1993, pp. 55-57.

9. The study The potato eaters (F 78 / JH 734

); the lithograph of this is The potato eaters (F 1661 / JH 737

10. This description has been linked to a passage in Millet’s biography, where Sensier, in reference to the painting L’homme à la houe (Man with a hoe), speaks of peasants who ‘spare others the need to sow, plough and harvest in order to live, and thus deserve not to go short of the bread which they have sown’ (épargnent aux autres hommes la peine de semer, de labourer et de recueiller pour vivre, et méritent ainsi de ne pas manquer de ce pain qu’ils ont semé’). Here Sensier is quoting La Bruyère, Les caractères de Théophraste (1688). See Sensier 1881, pp. 237-238; exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1993, pp. 36-37, and exhib. cat. Paris 1998, p. 50.

11. Paul Durand-Ruel dealt in progressive art, so Theo knew him as a fellow art dealer.

12. These words must have been inspired by Jean Gigoux’s comment on a work by Delacroix in Causeries sur les artistes de mon temps: ‘The picture was exhibited and criticism followed immediately: “What a daub!... But it’s not finished!... And the shadows are not blended’ (Le tableau fut exposé et, aussitôt, les critiques d’aller leur train: “Quelle croûte!... Mais ce n’est pas fini!... Mais les ombres ne sont pas fondues”) (Gigoux 1885, p. 66).

b. Means: ‘blijft onuitgevoerd’ (remains undone).

13. Theo must have promised to send the special issue of L’Illustration about the Salon, which came out on 25 April 1885 (no. 2200); it had 48 pages and cost 2 francs. He sent it at the beginning of May (letter 500).