1. These watercolour sketches, The Langlois bridge with washerwomen (F 1480 / JH 1382 ) and Pink peach trees (F 1469 / JH 1384 ), are after the paintings The Langlois bridge with washerwomen (F 397 / JH 1368 ) and Pink peach trees (‘Souvenir de Mauve’) (F 394 / JH 1379 ), which Van Gogh had intended for Tersteeg and Jet Mauve respectively.

2. Since Van Gogh later used similar wording for the left-hand work of a triptych in a letter sketch in letter 597 (that is ‘Pale pink orchard, apricot trees’), he must be referring here to The pink orchard (F 555 / JH 1380 ). This was painted on hand-prepared absorbent canvas. See Peres et al. 1991, p. 27. Although F 555 / JH 1380 is on size 25 ‘figure’ (65 x 81 cm), this will be the size 30 absorbent canvas Van Gogh said he was waiting for in his previous letter (see letter 593). In the present letter he calls his orchards no. 25, 30 and 20 canvases, but the sizes of the paintings he had made up to this point are 25 (F 555 / JH 1380 and F 403 / JH 1378 ), 20 (F 394 / JH 1379 ) and 15 (F 553 / JH 1387 and F 556 / JH 1383 ), and F 405 / JH 1394 is half the size of a no. 30 canvas. Van Gogh wasn’t always accurate when it came to giving canvas sizes; in letters 611 and 620 he called a 25 ‘figure’ canvas a size 30. ‘The pink peach trees’ is the painting Pink peach trees (‘Souvenir de Mauve’) (F 394 / JH 1379 ).

3. The white orchard (F 403 / JH 1378 ); cf. also the sketch in letter 597.

4. A few days later Van Gogh made a variant of the painting for Tersteeg: The Langlois bridge with washerwomen (F 571 / JH 1392 ). See letter 595, n. 4.

5. See for Asnières: letter 592, n. 14.

6. The bullfight Van Gogh describes here took place on Sunday, 8 April. We learn from a letter to the editor in Le Forum Républicain that the fight had to be abandoned because the torero, Eugène Hélias, was injured. See Clébert and Richard 1989, p. 72.

7. Adolphe Monticelli, Arabs and horseman, 1871 (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum). Ill. 305 .

8. This was most probably about the falling-out between Camille Pissarro and the collector, amateur artist and pastrycook Eugène Murer, who owned several of Pissarro’s early works. In a letter of 12 March 1888 Pissarro had refused Murer’s offer to dedicate his book Un quart d’heure d’amour to him because their artistic views had meanwhile diverged to such an extent that they could no longer understand each other. Pissarro’s refusal meant an irreversible breach. See Correspondance Pissarro 1980-1991, vol. 2, p. 219 (no. 473).

9. There was probably no exchange with Camille Pissarro during Van Gogh’s lifetime, since the only works in the estate are an etching, which the artist gave Theo, the fan he made for Jo (see letter 830) and a small watercolour. In August 1890 Theo exchanged Vincent’s Mulberry tree (F 637 / JH 1796 ) for a painting by Pissarro. Jo van Gogh-Bonger sold this unidentified work, ‘a no. 10 canvas’, to Ambroise Vollard in 1897. See FR b825, b936 and Account book 2002, pp. 24, 199.

10. As far as we know, Van Gogh and Seurat never exchanged works.

11. Van Gogh’s first teacher Anton Mauve had died on 5 February 1888.

12. Theo wrote to Jo Bonger on 14 February 1889 about the problems Vincent had encountered when painting out of doors in Paris: ‘In Paris he saw masses of things he wanted to paint, but time and again he was prevented from doing so. Models didn’t want to pose for him, he was forbidden to sit and work in the street and because of his volatile disposition this repeatedly led to scenes, which upset him so much that he became completely unapproachable and by the end of it all he’d had more than enough of Paris.’ See Brief happiness 2000, pp. 160-161.

13. The Danish painter is Christian Mourier-Petersen. See for his departure for Paris: letter 584, n. 12. Two examples of his work in Arles are the painting Apricot trees in blossom, Arles, showing the same orchard as Van Gogh’s Pink peach trees (‘Souvenir de Mauve’) (F 394 / JH 1379 ), and Girl from Arles, for which he may have used the same model as Van Gogh in Mousmé (F 431 / JH 1519 ). See Larsson 1993, pp. 17-22, ills. 1, 4.

14. Since the autumn of 1887 the Bernard family had lived at 5 avenue de Beaulieu in Asnières, where Bernard had his studio in the garden. See exhib. cat. Mannheim 1990, p. 97. Van Gogh verifies this address with Bernard (with Paris as the place name) in letter 698.

15. In the ‘Chronique de la littérature et de l’art’ the critic Gustave Kahn discussed Van Gogh’s paintings at the Indépendants exhibition (see letter 582, nn. 8 and 9). In his article ‘Peinture: Exposition des indépendants’, he wrote: ‘Mr van Gogh paints large landscapes with a vigorous brush, paying little attention to the value and precision of his tones. A multicoloured multitude of books faces a tapestry; this subject, which is good for a study, cannot be the pretext for a painting.’ (M. Van Gogh brosse vigoureusement, sans un assez grand souci de la valeur et de l’exactitude de ses tons, de grands paysages. Vers une tapisserie s’oriente une multitude polychrome de livres; ce motif bon pour une étude, ne peut être un prétexte à tableau). See La Revue Indépendante (April 1888), no. 18 (vol. 7), pp. 160-164, quotation on p. 163.

16. The darkening of Rousseau’s paintings was caused to a significant extent by his use of ‘bitumen’ or ‘drying oil’. In his Souvenirs sur Th. Rousseau (1872) Sensier cited as examples of ‘this deplorable method’ the painting The descent of the cattle in the High Jura mountains , which Van Gogh knew from Mesdag’s collection (cf. letter 246, n. 13), and The chestnut avenue in the Louvre. See Michel Schulman et al., Théodore Rousseau 1812-1867. Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint. Paris 1999, pp. 50-52; and cat. The Hague 1996, pp. 381-384, cat. nos. 286-287.