1. The Englishman Horace Mann Livens went to study at the Antwerp Academy in 1885, when he was twenty-three. During the time that Van Gogh was living and studying there Livens took the winter courses ‘Life’ en ‘Antique statues’. See Antwerp, Bibliotheek Koninklijke Academie, Register 1885-1891, inv. no. 289. Livens painted a small watercolour portrait of Van Gogh that was to appear in the magazine Van Nu en Straks (1893).

2. The main exhibitions of Impressionist works during Van Gogh’s stay in Paris up to this point were the VIIIe exposition de peinture, the last group exhibition of the impressionists (15 May - 15 June 1886), the Ve exposition internationale de peinture at Georges Petit (15 June - 15 July 1886) and the IIe exposition de la Société des Artistes Indépendants (20 August - 21 September 1886). See Rewald 1978, p. 12 and Welsh-Ovcharov 1976, pp. 218-219.

Before he went to Paris, Van Gogh was reliant for his understanding of Impressionism on information he got from Theo; he had not then seen it for himself. By now, though, he knew exactly what it was about. Henceforth he uses the term Impressionism in the letters in a very general sense for all forms of modern art. He uses it to refer not only to ‘traditional’ Impressionism, but also to what would now be described as ‘Neo-Impressionism’, ‘Synthetism’, ‘Cloisonnism’ etc.

3. Here ‘nude figure’ and ‘landscape’ could be understood as references to genres, but Van Gogh could also have had specific works by Degas and Monet in mind. Theo handled Monet’s work from 1885 onwards, and he could have brought Vincent into contact with it. Vincent may also have been to the Ve exposition internationale de peinture at Georges Petit’s gallery, where there were 13 recent paintings by Monet – at any rate there were ten landscapes among them. See Wildenstein 1996, cat. nos. 889, 893, 994, 1032?, 1044, 1053, 1054, 1065, 1067, 1070.

There were seven Degas nudes in pastel at the VIIIe exposition de peinture, including Woman getting up (Princeton, Princeton University Art Museum, The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, Inc.). Ill. 59

. See for the identification of the other pastels: Richard Thomson, Degas. The nudes. London 1988, pp. 130-132.

4. It is not possible to identify the works he refers to here. See also letter 568, n. 9. Theo wrote to their mother about these flower still lifes in June-July 1886 (FR b942). See Documentation, June-July 1886.

a. Van Gogh wrote in French ‘LES TONS ROMPUS ET NEUTRES’.

5. Van Gogh is thus saying that he favours intensification over subtlety; see for the term ‘harmonist’, which occurs in Baudelaire: letter 536, n. 18.

6. Cf. the ‘gymnastics of coloured composition’ (gymnastique de composition colorée) which Bracquemond discusses in Du dessin et de la couleur: letter 536, n. 22.

7. It is not possible to say with certainty which ‘two heads’ are meant here, but they could be Self-portrait as a painter (F 181 / JH 1090) and Self-portrait with pipe (F 180 / JH 1194).

8. For ‘frankly’ read ‘really’. It is not possible to say exactly which landscapes he means here; ‘a dozen’ does not have to be taken literally. For a suggested identification, see Van Tilborgh 2007, p. 70, n. 31, and Louis van Tilborgh and Ella Hendriks, ‘Dirk Hannema and the rediscovery of a painting by Vincent van Gogh’, The Burlington Magazine, June 2010, p. 403, n. 87. Cf. also Date.

9. At the beginning of June 1886 the Van Gogh brothers had moved from 25 rue Laval to a larger apartment at 54 rue Lepic, likewise in Montmartre. Vincent had his own studio there. Theo wrote to Caroline van Stockum-Haanebeek about this apartment on 10 July 1887: ‘As you may know, I am living with my brother Vincent, who is studying painting with indefatigable diligence. Since he needs quite a lot of space for his work, we are living in quite a large apartment in Montmartre (rue Lepic 54) which, as you know, is a suburb of Paris built up against a hill. The remarkable thing about our flat is that from the windows we have a magnificent view across the city with the hills of Meudon, St-Cloud etc. on the horizon, and a piece of sky above it that is almost as big as when one stands on the dunes. With the different effects created by the variations in the sky it is a subject for I don’t know how many paintings’ (FR b727).

10. Van Gogh did not go to Arles until February 1888, but the fact that he was already toying with the idea of going to the south in the winter of 1886-1887 is confirmed by a letter from Theo to his mother written on 28 February 1887: ‘Things are going along the same as ever here; I obviously didn’t express myself clearly, for you seem to think that Vincent has gone. That’s not the case; he’s still here and doesn’t seem to be planning to go away in the spring as he had originally planned to do. He has painted a couple of portraits that turned out well, but he always does it for nothing. It’s a shame that he doesn’t have any desire to start earning, because if he wanted to he could do it here; but one can’t change a person’ (FR b906).

11. Henry Allan, Arthur Henri Christiaan Briët, Paulus Philippus Rink and Ernest Durand were fellow students at the academy in Antwerp. According to the files of the Koninklijke Academie, the first three took the ‘Life’ course in the winter of 1885-1886, Durand took the ‘Antique Statues’ course. Livens was enrolled for both classes, Van Gogh only for the latter (Antwerp, Bibliotheek Koninklijke Academie. Register 1885-1891, inv. no. 289). While Van Gogh was in Antwerp, Briët was living at number 20 Korte Beeldekensstraat, in other words just around the corner from him.

12. From letter 718 it emerges that Van Gogh exhibited work at the paint merchant Julien Tanguy’s shop and with the art dealers Pierre Firmin Martin and Georges Thomas. We do not know who the fourth dealer was; it may have been the courtier dealer Alphonse Portier, who lived in the same building as Theo and Vincent. See Welsh-Ovcharov 1976, p. 20 and exhib. cat. Paris 1988, pp. 338-343.

13. The works acquired through exchanges up to this point probably included Frank Myers Boggs, Honfleur harbour (with the dedication ‘à l’ami Vincent’) and Coal barges on the Thames (with the dedication ‘A son ami Vincent’); Cristóbal de Antonio, Portrait of a young woman (with the dedication ‘A mon ami Vincent’), John Peter Russell, Seated female nude, and Vincent van Gogh (inscribed ‘Amitié’), and Fabian, View from Montmartre (all Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum). We do not know whether all these artists also had works by Van Gogh, but we do know that Russell had Shoes (F 332 / JH 1234). See cat. Amsterdam 2011 for the works that Van Gogh may have exchanged.

14. The period (or periods) when Van Gogh worked at Cormon’s studio has been the subject of debate. We agree with Van Tilborgh, who argued that this must have been in the months immediately after Van Gogh’s arrival in Paris (early March to early June 1886). See – also for a summary of previous points of view and of literature: Van Tilborgh 2007. The studio was at 104 boulevard de Clichy, in the 18th arrondissement (see Destremau 1997).

15. Isabella Adriana de Duerwaerder, the widow of Theodor Jacques van Roosmaelen, lived at 25 Mutsaardstraat (district 2) in Antwerp and was a ‘shopkeeper in artists’ materials’. Various English and Scottish students at the Antwerp Academy were registered as lodging at this address in the 1880-1893 period. On 6 March 1893, Mrs van Roosmaelen moved to number 16 Blindenstraat in Antwerp, near the entrance to the Academy. See SAA, Civil registration and Alick P.F. Ritchie, ‘L’Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts d’Anvers’, The Studio 1 (1893), pp. 141-142.