1. The enclosed sketch Starry night over the Rhône (F 1515 / JH 1593), dimensions unknown, is after the painting of the same name F 474 / JH 1592 [2723].
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2. The letter sketch The Yellow House (‘The street’) (F 1453 / JH 1590) is after the painting of the same name F 464 / JH 1589 [2721]. See letter 700 for the drawing Van Gogh sent to Theo later.
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3. This was Restaurant Vénissac in place Lamartine.
4. In a letter to Willemien van Gogh, Roulin gave his address as ‘Rue de la Montagne des Cordes 10’ (FR b710; Verzamelde brieven 1973, vol. 4, p. 164). Since this street is on the right after the two bridges, Van Gogh must be referring to Roulin’s place of work: the station’s mail room was in the cul-de-sac Impasse Lamartine, on the left beside the Yellow House in the sketch. Cf. the map in exhib. cat. Chicago 2001, p. 109.
5. This was the Café de la Gare, where Van Gogh had painted The night café (F 463 / JH 1575 [2711]). See letter 676.
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6. Next door to Van Gogh’s house, in the left-hand side of the premises at 2 place Lamartine, was the grocer’s shop run by François Damase and Marguerite Crévoulin.
7. The description in chapter 1 of boulevard de la Chapelle and boulevard de Rochechouart in Paris, where the hôtel de la Villette was located in Zola’s L’assommoir. See Zola 1960-1967, vol. 2, pp. 376ff, 1547.
8. The opening sentences of Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet read: ‘Since the temperature was 33 degrees, boulevard Bourdon was completely deserted. Lower down, the inky water of the Saint-Martin canal, closed between its two locks, lay spread out in a straight line’ (Comme il faisait une chaleur de 33 degrés, le boulevard Bourdon se trouvait absolument désert. Plus bas, le canal Saint-Martin, fermé par les deux écluses, étalait en ligne droite son eau couleur d’encre). See Gustave Flaubert, Oeuvres. L’éducation sentimentale. Trois contes. Bouvard et Pécuchet. Ed. A. Thibaudet and R. Dumesnil. Paris 1952, p. 713.
Van Gogh’s reference to the quai de la Villette (so that he locates the action considerably further to the north) was probably prompted by the fact that Flaubert also mentions the Saint Martin Canal. This canal is 6.6 km long and links the bassin de la Villette with the Seine, close to the scene of the action described by Flaubert. See Baedeker 1889-1, pp. 62, 190. Cf. Noll 1994, pp. 171-172.
9. The letter from Gauguin is 688; Van Gogh’s reply to it is not known. In the surviving fragment of an unsent draft letter to Gauguin, Van Gogh responded to Gauguin’s suggestion to reduce the prices of his work. See RM16 and Jansen et al. 2000.
10. Alongside his job at Boussod, Valadon & Cie, where he dealt in the work of established artists, Theo also supported modern artists by buying their work for his own collection and offering them accommodation (as he did Koning and De Haan, among others). See exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1999.
11. See letter 688, n. 7, for Laval’s financial backer.
12. Van Gogh had written to Bernard about the cost of living in Arles in letter 684.
13. See letter 300, n. 10, for the saying ‘God is like a lighthouse whose beam flashes on and off’ (Dieu est comme un phare à éclipse), taken from Jules Michelet’s La sorcière.
14. See letter 683, n. 18, for the description of Giotto as sickly, but a genius.
15. Ploughed fields (‘The furrows’) (F 574 / JH 1586 [2719]), which Van Gogh had sketched in letter 687.
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16. This consignment from Tanguy must have contained the coarsely ground paint that Van Gogh had asked for in letter 687. It emerges from that letter that he also wanted Theo to order the 5 or 10 metres of canvas from Tasset.
17. Theo must have written about his visit to Maurin; see letter 685.
18. Van Gogh made the same comparison between making paintings and mining diamonds in letters 651 and 696 to Bernard.
a. Read: ‘en soi-même’.
19. This is Paul Eugène Milliet (‘The lover’) (F 473 / JH 1588 [2720]). Van Gogh drew a waning crescent moon and a star beside the text. The painting shows a waxing crescent moon.
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