1. Theo’s promise to make it financially possible for Gauguin to come was perhaps connected to Uncle Vincent’s legacy. See letter 659, n. 12.

2. In letter 655 of about 5 August Van Gogh had answered Bernard’s question as to whether Gauguin was still in Pont-Aven in the affirmative. However, Bernard had already decided to go to Pont-Aven before he received it, as we learn from a letter he wrote to his sister Madeleine on 29 July. His plan was to arrive on 8 or 10 August, and Gauguin wrote to Schuffenecker on 14 August 1888: ‘Young Bernard is here and has brought some interesting things back from St-Briac’ (Le petit Bernard est ici et a rapporté de St-Briac des choses intéressantes) (see Harscoët-Maire 1997, p. 180 and Correspondance Gauguin 1984, p. 210). After Gauguin left for Arles, Bernard went back to Paris at the beginning of November (see exhib. cat. Mannheim 1990, p. 98).

The ‘someone else’ in the company was either Henry Moret, whose studio acted as a meeting place for the group surrounding Gauguin, or Ernest Ponthier de Chamaillard, whom Van Gogh referred to in later letters as ‘the other one’ and ‘the other young one’. In 1906 Chamaillard said in Mercure de France: ‘In 1888, when Gauguin was in Pont-Aven with Laval, Moret and me, he told us of the arrival of a very young painter called Bernard, whose early work he liked and from whom he hoped to see some good art’ (En 1888, alors que Gauguin se trouvait à Pont-Aven avec Laval, Moret et moi, il nous annonça l’arrivée d’un tout jeune peintre nommé Bernard, dont il appréciait les débuts, et de qui il espérait un bel effort d’art.) Quoted from Wildenstein 2001, p. 612. See also Henry Moret, aquarelles et peintures 1856-1913. C. Puget and C. Sauvage. Exhib. cat. Pont-Aven (Musée de Pont-Aven), 1988. Pont-Aven 1988, ‘Biographie’ (not paginated).

a. Read: ‘mettons’.

b. Read: ‘je serai délivré’.

3. This remark about debates with Englishmen and academic artists must have been prompted by Bernard’s letter. In Pont-Aven there was something of a hierarchy among the three hotels where artists stayed: the Americans and British stayed at the Hôtel des Voyageurs, the French and a few less well-off foreigners at the Hôtel du Lion d’Or, and the penniless painters at the Auberge Gloanec. See exhib. cat. Paris 2003, p. 24. Gauguin had written to Van Gogh about his relations with the academic artists in letter 646; he wrote to Schuffenecker on 14 August 1888: ‘All the Americans here are violently against Impressionism. I was obliged to threaten to hit them, and now we have peace’ (Ici tous les Américains sont furieux contre l’impressionisme. J’ai été obligé de menacer de cogner et maintenant nous avons la paix). See Correspondance Gauguin 1984, p. 210.

4. Garden with flowers (F 1456 / JH 1537