1. We learn from letter 615 that Theo’s employers were thinking of sending him to America, where the firm had been doing a great deal of business in both art and reproductions since 1848. We do not know exactly what Theo’s assignment would have been. In the end the trip did not go ahead. For the American operations of Goupil and Boussod, Valadon & Cie, see Hélène Lafont-Couturier, ‘“Le bon livre” ou la portée éducative des images publiées et diffusées par la maison Goupil’, Etat des lieux 1994, pp. 9-36, esp. pp. 30-34. See also Fidell-Beaufort 2000, p. 101.

a. Read: ‘vivait’.

3. Mourier-Petersen was said to have gone to the south of France in part for his health, having spent the winter of 1886 in Paris. We do not know what his health problems were. Van Gogh surmised in letter 613 that Mourier was suffering from a nervous condition brought on by the examinations he had to take in his study of medicine. However, he had abandoned his medical studies as early as 1880 to become an artist; see letter 611, n. 8.

4. Arsène Alexandre, Honoré Daumier. L’homme et l’oeuvre. Paris 1888. The book gives a chronological summary of Daumier’s life and work, and contains a catalogue of his lithographs.

5. See for this exhibition letter 600, n. 10.

6. The Langlois bridge with a lady with a parasol (F 570 / JH 1421

) and Landscape with the edge of a road (F 567 / JH 1419

7. The brothers must have seen this painting by Renoir in Paris; we do not know which work it was.

8. Van Gogh had seen landscapes by Cézanne at Portier’s (see letter 624) and no doubt also at Tanguy’s, where Cézanne stored paintings – as he did himself.