1. It has not proved possible to identify which drawing clubs Van Gogh belonged to. Tralbaut suggested a club in Reyndersstraat as one possibility; Persoons and Wilmer one on the Grote Markt. These unregulated drawing clubs – sometimes described as sketching clubs – were usually set up by students of the senior classes at the Antwerp Academy. For a small subscription, members could go there in the evening to draw from models, nude and clothed. See Tralbaut 1948, p. 172, and Persoons 1990, p. 23, n. 2.

2. This work with nude torsos was overpainted by Van Gogh in Paris with Still life with meadow flowers and roses, 1886 (F 278 / JH 1103). Ill. 3103. See Luuk Struick van der Loeff et al., ‘Rehabilitation of a flower still life in the Kröller-Müller Museum and a lost Antwerp painting by Van Gogh’, in Van Gogh: New Findings. Van Gogh Studies 4. Zwolle and Amsterdam 2012, pp. 33-54.

3. These large figures are not known.

4. A reference to Jean Gigoux, Causeries sur les artistes de mon temps. See letters 494, n. 2 and 526, n. 10.

5. See for the expression ‘beyond the paint’: letter 439, n. 3.

a. Glazing involves applying a thin coat of diluted paint that gives a transparent colour.

6. Van Gogh is referring here to the ‘drawings of figures’ he took with him from Nuenen to Antwerp. See letter 542.

7. Eugène Siberdt had been teaching at the Antwerp Academy since 1883. During Van Gogh’s time there, Siberdt was one of those responsible for the elements Dessin d’après la figure antique (‘Classical Statues’) and Dessin d’àprès le model vivant (‘Life’) (Antwerp, Bibliotheek Koninklijke Academie, Register 1885-1891, inv. no. 289).

8. Theo lived in an apartment at 25 rue Laval in Paris; he had probably already responded to Vincent’s possible arrival and an attendant move, and had let it be known that he thought his apartment was too small for the two of them. In letter 559 Vincent writes: ‘What you say about the apartment is perhaps really rather expensive. I mean, I’d be just as happy if it weren’t quite as good’ (ll. 192-195). In the event, Vincent and Theo moved to Montmartre in June 1886 (see letters 557, n. 1 and 569, n. 9).