1. The wording ‘a dozen I think’ (une douzaine, je crois) means roughly twelve drawings. By ‘small’ drawings Van Gogh must mean the ones measuring about 25 x 35 cm; in letter 601 he said he had finished four of them. Less than a week later Vincent sent Theo five more small drawings: see letter 605, n. 9.

It is not possible to say for certain which drawings made up the respective consignments. The first batch must in any event have included Public garden and pond in front of the Yellow House (F 1513 / JH 1412

) (see n. 2 below), as well as two others of the park (see n. 5 below).

Other candidates are Landscape with a path and pollard willows (F 1499 / JH 1372

), which Van Gogh dated ‘Arles Mars 1888’ (Arles, March 1888), the four drawings that Van Gogh said he had finished in letter 601, probably including Field with farmhouses (F 1474 / JH 1407

) and Farmhouse in a wheatfield (F 1415 / JH 1408

); and the drawings The public garden (F 1421 / JH 1414), Field with a factory (F 1500 / JH 1373) and Landscape with trees, a ploughman and houses (F 1517 / JH 1374), which are very similar to this first group in terms of composition and subject.

Going by the subject, the following two drawings are also dated early and assumed to have been in the first batch: Men working in a field (F 1090 / JH 1406), and Tiled roof with chimneys and church tower (F 1480a / JH 1403). It emerges from letter 631 that Canal with bridge and washerwomen (F 1473 / JH 1405

) was also in one of the two consignments. In view of the subject, the stylistically similar drawing The Rhône with boats and a bridge (F 1472 / JH 1404) may have been made during the mistral Van Gogh mentioned (letter 605) and would consequently have belonged to the first batch.

Altogether there are 18 known sketchbook pages of about 25 x 35 cm that date from the early months in Arles. As well as the 12 drawings mentioned above (F 1513 is not a sketchbook sheet) they are Landscape with windmills at Fontvieille (F 1496 / JH 1496), Field with houses (F 1506 / JH 1375), Landscape with hut (F 1498r / JH 1457) with on the verso A lane in the public garden with benches (F 1498v / JH 1614), The road to Tarascon with a man walking (F 1502 / JH 1492

), Road with trees (F 1518a / JH 1495) and Landscape with a tree in the foreground (F 1509 / JH 1494). See cat. Amsterdam 2007, p. 5, nn. 26, 27. The larger drawing The Langlois bridge (F 1470 / JH 1377

, 35 x 47 cm) is dated to mid-May 1888 so it did not go in either of the first two consignments. See also letter 615, n. 9.

2. Public garden and pond in front of the Yellow House (F 1513 / JH 1412

), which was indeed drawn on yellow paper; other drawings from this period (in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum) are on cream paper.

3. Van Gogh rented the right-hand side of this house, shown in the small sketch and to become known as the Yellow House, from 1 May. It was at number 2 place Lamartine, on the northern edge of the city (lot 398). Ill. 2180

. He set up his studio in it, but did not start living there until September, once the house had been redecorated and furnished. He officially registered himself at this address on 16 October 1888 (FR b2949 and cf. letter 677). There is a floor plan on blue paper, showing the layout in 1922, made by Léon Ramser (FR b3317). Ill. 2181

. See for old photographs of the Yellow House: Dorn 1990, ills. 2-5.

4. Bernard stayed in Saint-Briac in Brittany from 25 April until about 10 August. See letter 664, n. 2. He lived in a small house attached to the inn run by Mrs Lemasson. He wrote to his parents on 26 April 1888: ‘I’ve got my old house, where I’ve settled in, I do as I please. The garden, the first and second floors and the attic are entirely at my disposal.’ (J’ai eu mon ancienne maison où je suis installé, je fais ce que je veux. Le jardin, tout le premier, le deuxième, le grenier sont à ma disposition.) See Harscoët-Maire 1997, pp. 163, 181 (n. 6).

5. It is not possible to say for certain which two drawings these were. The most likely candidates are Path in the public garden (F 1476 / JH 1409

) and Public garden with benches (F 1487 / JH 1410

). See cat. Amsterdam 2007, p. 5, n. 26.

6. We do not know which paintings by Guillaumin and Bernard were in Russell’s possession.

7. Van Gogh suggested such an exchange to Russell in letter 598.

8. Van Gogh had asked for 3 metres of absorbent canvas in letter 597. It emerges from letter 610 that it came from Tasset.

9. There is no known painting of these dimensions dating from early May 1888 nor one on a smaller, no. 25 canvas, which Van Gogh sometimes called a no. 30 (see letter 594, n. 2). He most likely painted the smaller Farmhouse in a wheatfield (F 408 / JH 1417

) on the new canvas. This is probably absorbent canvas, but finer in texture than F 555 (see letter 594, n. 2). Van Gogh thought that the new absorbent canvas was not coarse enough (see letter 610) so he may not have done any more work on it.

10. The story ‘Le Moujik Pakhom. Faut-il beaucoup de terre pour un homme?’ from Tolstoy’s A la recherche du bonheur is about a man who has the opportunity to buy, for a small sum, the amount of land he can walk round in one day. His greed is his undoing, because after running flat out all day to get as much land as possible, he drops dead. See Tolstoy 1886, pp. 189-228.

11. In letter 600 Van Gogh mentioned ten orchards and a failed study of a cherry tree. By ‘douzaine’ he must therefore be referring to these eleven works. There is nothing to suggest that he painted yet another orchard after this, since the season was as good as over (see letter 600). Pink peach trees (‘Souvenir de Mauve’) (F 394 / JH 1379

) was meant for Jet Mauve, so he did not count it as part of the decoration.

The first six are the orchards Van Gogh painted first: The pink peach tree (F 404 / JH 1391

), The pink orchard (F 555 / JH 1380

), The white orchard (F 403 / JH 1378

), Small pear tree in blossom (F 405 / JH 1394

), Orchard with apricot trees in blossom (F 553 / JH 1387

) and Orchard with apricot trees in blossom (F 556 / JH 1383

Among the last six, which Van Gogh considered less successful, were Orchard bordered by cypresses (F 513 / JH 1389

) and Orchard with peach trees in blossom (F 551 / JH 1396

), which were still at an early stage when he wrote letter 597, Orchard (F 552 / JH 1381

), Orchard with pear trees in blossom (F 406 / JH 1399

) and the large study of the cherry tree that he had spoiled. With the exception of the last of these, which is not known and which he must have destroyed (see letter 606), these are the ten he wanted to send. He did not count the small studies Orchard bordered by cypresses (F 554 / JH 1388

), Peach tree in blossom (F 557 / JH 1397

) and Peach tree in blossom (F 399 / JH 1398

) as part of the decoration; for that matter he did not include them in the summary in letter 600 either.

12. Van Gogh thanked Theo for this 100 francs in letter 600.

13. Van Gogh meant the owners of Hotel-Restaurant Carrel, where he was staying and where he took his meals. See letter 577, n. 4.

14. Jean-François Raffaëlli, Edmond de Goncourt, 1888 (Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts). Ill. 1232

. The painting, which was exhibited at the 1888 Salon, is not reproduced in the issue of Illustration Van Gogh refers to. There is a good chance that he is basing what he says here on the enthusiastic description of the portrait in L’Intransigeant of 1 May 1888 (p. 2).

15. Jules Breton was represented with Young women going to a procession (Utica, New York, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute) and The evening star (Toledo, The Toledo Museum of Art). Gabriël Séailles discussed these works in his article ‘Salon de 1888’ in L’Illustration 91 (28 April 1888): ‘I do not need to add to the praise that Mr Jules Breton has already received. In Young women going to a procession, and in The evening star, his admirers will rediscover the poetic charm which simply reflects the artist’s feelings about the countryside he knows and loves, and from which he just chooses the parts that inspire him.’ (L’éloge de M. Jules Breton n’est plus à faire. Dans les Jeunes Filles se rendant à la Procession, dans l’Etoile du Berger, ses admirateurs retrouveront le charme d’une poésie qui n’est que l’émotion de l’artiste devant une nature qu’il connaît, qu’il aime et dont seulement il choisit les aspects qui l’inspirent) (p. 298). This article was also published separately as an offprint. There was an engraving of Young women going to a procession on p. 296. Ill. 600

16. Theo turned 31 on 1 May. The painting is Orchard with pear trees in blossom (F 406 / JH 1399

): see letter 600, n. 11.

a. Read: ‘habiter’.

17. This is the first time Vincent raises the possibility of sharing a studio with Gauguin, who at this point was in Pont-Aven in Brittany. The idea, mentioned in passing, was to take more definite form in the coming months and became a recurrent theme in the letters. Eventually Gauguin stayed in the Yellow House from the end of October to the end of December.

18. The ‘petticoat episode’ probably derives from the novel En ménage by Joris-Karl Huysmans, which Van Gogh read at about this time: he quotes from it in June 1888 (see letter 628, n. 6). Huysmans writes about the character named Cyprien: ‘Just as during the time of the petticoat episode when he sought relief from his worries in books, he found none, as literature up until then rarely dealt with those sad or happy feelings which are so often awakened in man in times of solitude, without any clearly defined cause.’ (De même que pendant la période de la crise juponnière où il demandait à des livres l’apaisement des ses ennuis, il n’en découvrit point, la littérature s’étant peu, jusqu’à ce jour, occupée de ces sensations tristes ou joyeuses qui s’éveillent chez l’homme, dans la solitude, sans cause bien définie, souvent) (Paris 1881, chapter 15, pp. 325-326).

b. Van Gogh wrote ‘aissances’: possibly a pun on the word ‘essences’.

19. The Service du cadastre (land register) in Arles lists one Aimé Verdier, ‘propriétaire à Milhaud (Gard)’ as the owner of lot numbers 398 and 399 from 1858 to 1910. The ‘Maison Verdier’ was all of 2, place Lamartine as well as the large building behind. When Van Gogh lived at 2 place Lamartine, it was no longer owned by Aimé Verdier, who had died in 1872. The house had passed on to his daughter, Marie Louise Verdier, and her husband, Raymond Triare-Brun. See Murphy 2016, p. 273 (n. 13).

The left-hand side of place Lamartine 2 was occupied by the grocer’s shop run by François Damase Crévoulin and his wife Marguerite Favier; the right-hand side was the accommodation rented by Van Gogh. The address books L’indicateur marseillais of 1888 and 1889 mention an ‘E. Brunel, spirit merchant, avenue de Montmajour 72 (near place Lamartine)’. These premises may also have been part of lot number 398, owned by Verdier, and could have been the ‘quite large house’ Van Gogh mentions. Verdier owned no other buildings in Arles. A second possibility is that by the ‘assez grand hôtel’ Van Gogh meant Bernard Soulè’s house. Soulè was the managing agent for the Yellow House and owned the building diagonally opposite at 53 avenue de Montmajour, where he lived with his daughter and son-in-law. In letter 745, however, Van Gogh refers to ‘the landlord’s agent’, which indicates that he knew Soulè was not the owner.

In the summons of February 1889, Soulè is described as ‘landlord, of 53 avenue Montmajour ... managing agent of the house occupied by Mr Vincent van Gogh’ (see Documentation, 27 February 1889). The land register records only one building in his name: 53 avenue de Montmajour (lot number 373), diagonally opposite the Yellow House, in the block where the police station was also located. Soulè was therefore not the owner of the Yellow House but the agent who collected the rent on behalf of Mme Verdier – who did not live in Arles.