1. The Italian freedom fighter Giuseppe Garibaldi led an extraordinarily tumultuous life. He commanded army units, drew up Republican liberation programmes, offered his services during the Third Republic and became a member of the Chamber of Deputies in 1874.
2. The knight errant Don Quixote is the protagonist of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s eponymous novel Don Quixote of 1605. A Don Quixote is someone who fights blindly for fanciful ideals.
3. Uncle Vincent van Gogh, who lived in Princenhage.
4. Constant-Joseph Brochart mainly painted bacchanals, Oriental subjects and elegant, fashionable ladies. See Schurr and Cacan de Bissy 1972-1989, vol. 2, p. 80.
5. The sheet is not full. Van Gogh apparently meant to end his letter here (in his next letter to Theo he seemed to think that he had actually done so – see the opening sentences of letter 650), but in fact he continued on another sheet. The fact that the second sheet does belong to the present letter is confirmed in l. 98, where Van Gogh refers back to ll. 60-66 on the first sheet.
6. This remarks refers to ll. 60-66.
7. Gauguin owed money to the doctor and the inn in Pont-Aven, where he had been living on credit for months (see letter 623).
8. The third volume of the diaries of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, covering the years 1866-1870, was published in April 1888. On 10 July 1866 they remarked on Jules Dupré’s fervour in their Journal: ‘There is at the same time something of an apostle, a workman and a loony in the great landscape painter.’ (Il y a à la fois de l’apôtre, de l’ouvrier et du toqué, chez le grand paysagiste.)
In the same diary entry, they said of Dupré’s patron: ‘Went to Isle-Adam to see the beautiful and curious collection of modern landscapes belonging to the coach-builder Charles Binder ... Stocky, newly rich and middle-class, he has tried, quite intelligently, to ennoble himself through his collection, artistic taste, his relationship with Jules Dupré’ (Été voir à Isle-Adam la belle et curieuse collection de paysages modernes du carrossier Charles Binder ... Un bourgeois râblé et enrichi, qui a essayé, assez intelligemment, de s’anoblir avec une collection, des goûts artistiques, une liaison avec Jules Dupré) (Goncourt 1887-1906, vol. 3, pp. 56-57). Binder, a Parisian coach-builder, had bought a country estate in Isle-Adam in 1853. His picture gallery, with work by Dupré, Corot and Rousseau, was famous. See Blanche Vogt, L’Isle-Adam, perle de L’Ile de France. Paris 1953, p. 48.
9. In letter 644 Van Gogh reported that Macknight and Boch had still not said anything about his work. The two studies he refers to are Garden with flowers (F 430 / JH 1510 [2668]) and Garden with flowers (F 429 / JH 1513 [2670]).
[2668] [2670]
a. Read: ‘à ton compte’.
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