1. As we learn from Vincent’s next letter to Theo (650), Bernard sent ten drawings. Seven of them are referred to below; the other three are Breton woman in a chapel, Breton woman and Lubricity. Ill. 2193 , 2945 , 2195 . All ten come from the Van Gogh brothers’ collection (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum). See also Roskill 1970, pp. 219-220.

2. Emile Bernard, Lane in Brittany with figures. Ill. 2196 .

3. Emile Bernard, Breton woman in an orchard. Ill. 2197 .

4. Emile Bernard, Breton woman with an umbrella. Ill. 2198 .

5. The batch included five drawings of nude women. Van Gogh says in letter 651 that he did not like Lubricity as much as the others, so that could not be the one he is talking about here. The four drawings he is referring to are Women bathing and the brothel scenes Female nude seated on a bed, Female nude reclining on a bed and A woman washing herself, the latter being the one Van Gogh calls ‘the one washing herself’. Ill. 2199 , 2200 , 2201 , 2202 .

6. Emile Bernard added an annotation in his 1911 edition of the letters which is worth including here (in that edition it was placed with the next letter, which at the time preceded the present one, and Van Gogh criticizes Baudelaire in both letters): ‘All this prompted by an admiring quotation on my part of the beautiful quatrain from Phares, by Charles Baudelaire:

Rembrandt – sad hospital filled full with murmurings,

Decorated only with a great crucifix

Where the tearful prayer exhales from the filth,

And brusquely traversed by a ray of winter.

(Tout ceci provoqué par une citation admirative de ma part du beau quatrain des Phares, de Charles Baudelaire:

Rembrandt triste hôpital tout rempli de murmures

Et d’un grand crucifix décoré seulement,

D’où la prière en pleurs s’exhale des ordures

Et d’un rayon d’hiver traversé brusquement.)

See Lettres à Bernard 1911, p. 99. The famous poem praising several artists is from Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal (1857).

7. There is a good chance that Van Gogh bought Eugène Gaujean’s etching Christ at the column. This print after an oil sketch attributed to Rembrandt (now in Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz Museum; Bredius 1969, no. 591), was included in Catalogue des tableaux anciens de toutes les écoles composant la très importante collection de M. Le Baron de Beurnonville. Paris 1881, lot 435, facing p. 264. The print (a heliogravure) is in the Van Gogh estate (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, t*1359). Ill. 2203 .Van Gogh may have known that Christ has red hair in the painting.

8. Rembrandt, The slaughtered ox, 1655 (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Ill. 347 .

9. Bernard defended the style of the primitives, as is clear from his introduction to the 1911 edition, where he speaks of ‘my preoccupations with the methods of the Italian and German primitives; with the symbolic meaning of line and colour, which preoccupied me, and which Van Gogh disapproved of, putting to me the contrasting case of Dutch naturalism’ (mes préoccupations des procédés italiens et allemands primitifs; du sens symbolique de la ligne et de la couleur, qui me préoccupait, et que Van Gogh désapprouvait en m’opposant le naturalisme hollandais). See Lettres à Bernard 1911, p. 35.

10. Here Van Gogh associates writing with drawing (and painting). He regarded it as an ideal to make drawing as automatic and as natural a means of expression as writing was for him.

11. Jan Vermeer of Delft, Woman in blue reading a letter, c. 1663-1664 (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). Ill. 445 .

12. There are currently some 35 known paintings by Vermeer. In his Musées de la Hollande, the writer and critic E.J.T. Thoré (writing under the pseudonym of W. Bürger), who was an important source for Van Gogh’s taste and art-historical knowledge, thought that there were two or three dozen Vermeers. See Thoré 1858-1860, vol. 2, p. 88.

13. Charles Blanc wrote about Dutch art mainly in his Ecole Hollandaise (1861), which is part of the series Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles (Paris 1861-1876). See n. 12 for Thoré, who described collections in the Netherlands. Eugène Fromentin wrote Les maîtres d’autrefois (1876), a survey of old Dutch and Flemish masters; see letter 450, n. 3.

14. Contrary to what Van Gogh asserts, biblical scenes make up an important part of Rembrandt’s oeuvre. In a footnote to this remark in the 1911 edition Bernard wrote: ‘Strange assertion!… The Pilgrims of Emmaus or the Good Samaritan, not much in Rembrandt’s oeuvre!…’ (Etrange assertion!... Les Pèlerins d’Emmaüs ou le Bon Samaritain, peu de chose dans l’oeuvre de Rembrandt!...). See Lettres à Bernard 1911, p. 107. For Rembrandt’s Christ figure see also letter 632, n. 3.

15. Given the virtually identical wording in letter 665 (‘the toothless laughter of Rembrandt the old lion, his head covered in a cloth, his palette in his hand’), likewise written to Bernard, who was familiar with the collection in the Louvre, it is most likely that he is talking about Self-portrait at the easel, 1660? (Paris, Musée du Louvre), Ill. 1608 , although Van Gogh may also have had in mind Self-portrait as Zeuxis, c. 1669 (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum). Ill. 377 .

16. After ‘familier’ Van Gogh deleted the words ‘ainsi qu’Ingres’ (as did Ingres).

17. Here Van Gogh is imagining the creation of Rembrandt’s The evangelist Matthew inspired by an angel, 1661 (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Ill. 371 .

18. Van Gogh was probably thinking of Delacroix’s Christ asleep during the tempest , which he had also written about in letter 632.

19. Mousmé (F 431 / JH 1519 ).

20. Read: ‘à l’écriture’. Van Gogh actually wrote ‘ecritures’, which means ‘the Scriptures’. The mistake can possibly be put down to the weariness he mentions here.