1. Theo said on 27 October that he would send this; see letter 713.

2. See letter 616, n. 2, for Gauguin’s seamanship.

3. Pierre Loti’s Pêcheur d’Islande (1886) is a novel about the hard, dangerous life of Breton fishermen, who fished in Icelandic waters. The story centres on the love between the fisherman Yann and the middle-class girl Gaud. At first Yann rejects her, but she remains faithful to him in her thoughts. When it is discovered on her father’s death that he had frittered away his fortune, the gulf between them narrows and they find each other again. They marry six days before Yann goes back to sea for months. It is to be his last voyage, from which he would not return.

Since Theo sent Caroline van Stockum-Haanebeek a copy of this book with such ‘masterly descriptions of nature’ on 10 July 1887 (FR b727), there is a good chance that Vincent also read it at this time.

4. This painting of a negress is not known. Technical research has demonstrated that the ‘big landscape of this region’ was Farmhouse in Arles, 1888 (W315/W308) (Indianapolis Museum of Art. Gift in memory of William Ray Adams). Ill. 2237

. See exhib. cat. Chicago 2001, pp. 165-166.

5. The letter sketch Sower (F - / JH 1619) is after the painting Sower (F 494 / JH 1617

6. The letter sketch Ploughed field with a tree-trunk (‘The furrows’) (F - / JH 1619) is after the painting of the same title F 573 / JH 1618

7. See letter 711, n. 2, for Theo’s trip to Brussels.

9. Milliet was due to go to Guelma in Algeria.