1. Although the plan to come to Paris had been in the air for a long time, Van Gogh went hotfoot from Antwerp to Paris with no prior warning.

2. The Salon Carré is the large gallery in the southern wing of the Louvre, where numerous masterpieces of European painting hung.

3. Later Van Gogh confessed that he had left Antwerp without paying his bills. In June 1888 he wrote: ‘Wasn’t I forced to do the same thing in order to come to Paris? And although I suffered the loss of many things then, it can’t be done otherwise in cases like that, and it’s better to go forward anyway than to go on being depressed’ (letter 623).