1. Van Gogh appears to be referring here to one of the two no. 30 canvases he mentions after this. We cannot rule out the possibility that he means a third work, in which case it must be Mousmé, which measures 74 x 60 cm; he stresses several times that painting it was a great effort for him (see letters 649 and 650).

2. The drawing is Garden with flowers (F 1455 / JH 1512 ); the two paintings, no. 30 canvases, are Garden with flowers (F 430 / JH 1510 ) and Garden with flowers (F 429 / JH 1513 ).

3. This order eventually arrived in Arles on 9 August: see letter 658. For this order see also letter 652.

4. The letter sketch Garden with flowers (F - / JH 1511) is after the first-mentioned painting (see n. 2 above).

5. Uncle Vincent van Gogh of Princenhage was seriously ill – he had a lung condition (letter 615). He died soon after this, on 28 July 1888.

6. According to his son Alexander, Reid was a skilled amateur artist and he often went ‘on sketching expeditions’ with Van Gogh on Sundays. He did not, though, have an aunt in the country. See Alexander McNeill Reid, notes for a biography of Alex Reid (unpublished manuscript, Acc. 6425, National Library of Scotland; photocopy).

7. We do not know who this ‘Maria’ is; Van Gogh might have meant Reid’s former girlfriend Mary Bacon Martin. Cf. letter 602, n. 21.

8. Kakemonos are Japanese prints in vertical format on a hanging roll of silk or paper, with rods at the top and bottom. Van Gogh had read about the Japanese approach to art in Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème, see letter 639, n. 11.

9. Van Gogh is referring to coloured medallions in the style of the eighteenth-century sculptor Pierre Julien. Commissioned by King Louis xvi, he had made sculptures for the milking parlours at Rambouillet, among them were four medallions depicting the ‘travaux de la laiterie’ (the work of the dairy), and a large medallion of a mother suckling her child. He could also mean replicas of them or coloured reproductions after these medallions.