1. This was letter 774.

2. Weissenbruch exhibited two watercolours at the World Exhibition The old mill and Canal, moonlight effect ; see letter 774, n. 10. Van Gogh was in fact mistaken: Weissenbruch did not die until 1903.

3. The last consignment of paintings (letter 767) had included four versions of the Berceuse: F 504 / JH 1655 , F 506 / JH 1670 , F 508 / JH 1671 and F 507 / JH 1672 .

4. Gauguin did in fact receive a painting of the Berceuse, as revealed by his letter of 29 March 1894 to Jo van Gogh-Bonger (GAC 43). See Gauguin lettres 1983, p. 331. We know that Bernard also had a Berceuse in his possession from a letter he wrote to his mother from Cairo in September 1894, in which he reported that the Berceuse he had left with Tanguy had been sold for 600 francs. See Bernard lettres 2012, no. 147, p. 338.

5. Van Gogh wanted Gauguin to have the two repetitions: Sunflowers in a vase (F 455 / JH 1668 ) and Sunflowers in a vase (F 458 / JH 1667 ). See letter 745.

a. Read: ‘mitan’.

6. Van Gogh says that the paintings of sunflowers are framed with strips of wood; these were the first two versions of Sunflowers in a vase, which had hung in Gauguin’s room in the Yellow House and were intended for Theo. The still life on the left in the letter sketch is F 454 / JH 1562 ; the still life on the right is F 456 / JH 1561 . See Van Tilborgh and Hendriks 2001, p. 21 (n. 18). The idea of the triptychs had been on Van Gogh’s mind for some time; see letter 736, n. 12.

7. Vincent told Theo this in letter 743. Van Gogh’s idea to hang his painting of the Berceuse in a fishing boat derives from Pierre Loti’s Pêcheur d’Islande (Icelandic fisherman); see letter 739, n. 5.

8. The green vineyard (F 475 / JH 1595 ) and The red vineyard (F 495 / JH 1626 ).

9. Sower with setting sun (F 450 / JH 1627 ).

10. Ploughed fields (‘The furrows’) (F 574 / JH 1586 ) and – assuming that ‘the furrows’ refers, as it did in letter 765, to two works – Ploughed field with a tree-trunk (‘The furrows’) (F 573 / JH 1618 ).

11. The bedroom (F 482 / JH 1608 ).

12. The letter sketch Trees with ivy in the garden of the asylum (F - / JH 1694) was made after the painting of the same name F 609 / JH 1693 .

13. Van Gogh means that he has not yet been outside the grounds of the asylum.

14. Théophile Peyron, the medical director of the asylum.

15. Constant Troyon began to notice the onset of paralysis at the end of 1863, and in April 1864 his intellectual faculties began to decline. After a spell in the madhouse in Vanves, his mother took him into her home, where he died in 1865, utterly insane. See Walther Gensel, Corot und Troyon. Bielefeld 1906, pp. 82-83 and A. Hustin, Constant Troyon. Paris 1893, p. 28.

16. Charles Marchal, whose progressive blindness caused him to suffer from depression, ended his life with a rifle-shot in 1877. See Schurr and Cacan de Bissy 1972-1989, vol. 2, pp. 32-33.

17. Regarding Meryon’s mental illness, see letter 621, n. 9.

18. Gustave Adolphe Jundt had died in 1884: having suffered for a long time from gout, which prevented him from working, he had thrown himself from his studio window in a fit of madness. See the obituaries in Chronique des arts et de la curiosité (24 May 1884), no. 21, pp. 169-170 and in Courrier de l’art 4 (6 June 1884), no. 23, p. 276.

19. Van Gogh had become acquainted with Matthijs Maris during his stay in London, when Maris was suffering from depression. See letter 318, n. 10. Maris, incidentally, did not die until 1917.

20. For Monticelli’s last years, see letter 603, n. 3.

21. This patient ‘who doesn’t reply except in incoherent sounds’ was a 23-year-old man who ‘spoke nothing but inarticulate words... he had never been able to learn anything and sometimes presented a state of nervous over-excitement that led him to acts of violence for the most trifling reasons’ (ne prononçait que des mots inarticulés... il n’avait jamais pu rien apprendre et présentait parfois un état de surexcitation nerveuse qui le portait à des actes de violence pour les motifs les plus futiles). Quoted from the admissions register, in Doiteau and Leroy 1928, p. 60.

22. At the time of Van Gogh’s stay in the asylum, there were ten other patients in the ‘gentlemen’s quarters’ (quartier des Messieurs), several of whom were very aggressive. For descriptions of these patients based on the admissions register, see Doiteau and Leroy 1928, pp. 56, 61-63.

23. Hydrotherapy had been used to treat the mentally ill since the mid-nineteenth century. Because this method involved alternating hot and cold baths, as well as cold showers, the asylum at Saint-Rémy had ‘bathing rooms provided with different shower systems’ (cabinets de bains pourvus de différents systèmes de douche). See the brochure from 1866, quoted in Coquiot 1923, p. 203. For a photograph of the baths in the asylum, see Tralbaut 1969, p. 274.

24. This room was on the ground floor, to the left of the entrance hall. See Doiteau and Leroy 1928, p. 63.

25. These four paintings of the garden – later in the letter Van Gogh says that they are no. 30 canvases – are Irises (F 608 / JH 1691 ), Lilacs (F 579 / JH 1692 ), Trees with ivy in the garden of the asylum (F 609 / JH 1693 ) and The garden of the asylum (F 734 / JH 1698 ).

26. The letter sketch Giant peacock moth (F - / JH 1701) was made after the drawing of the same name F 1523 / JH 1700 . It actually depicts a ‘great peacock moth’, also known as Saturnia pyri (Information provided by John Rawlins, an entomologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, PA).

27. This passage has been interpreted by various authors as an allusion to the painting Giant peacock moth (F 610 / JH 1702), but Van Gogh’s wording ‘to paint it I would have had to kill it’ reveals that he had not yet painted the moth. He produced the painting later, on the basis of the drawing. See cat. Amsterdam 2007, pp. 182-190, cat. nos. 351-353.

28. Later in the letter Van Gogh says that he has two or three drawings. In addition to Giant peacock moth (F 1523 / JH 1700 ) (see n. 26 above), these were probably Periwinkle (F 1614 / JH 2060 ) and Tassel hyacinth (F 1612 / JH 2059 ). Arums (F 1613 / JH 1703) presumably originated in the last week of May or early June; see cat. Amsterdam 2007, pp. 191-200, cat. nos. 354-356.

29. The painting The bedroom (F 482 / JH 1608 ) had to be lined because it had been damaged by moisture as the result of a flood; see letter 765. Theo had received it in the third consignment of paintings from Arles (letter 767). Eventually, at his brother’s request, Theo did not have it lined but sent it back to Vincent, who painted a repetition of it in September. See letters 779 and 800.

30. Gauguin was once in the possession of the following paintings by Cézanne: Female nude, before 1870; Mountains in Provence (near l’Estaque), c. 1879; The avenue, c. 1879; Still life with a bowl of fruit, c. 1879-1880, and The Château of Médan, c. 1880. See Rewald 1996, vol. 1, pp. 119-120, cat. no. 140, pp. 259-262, cat. no. 391, pp. 271-272, cat. no. 409, pp. 277-280, cat. no. 418, and pp. 292-294, cat. no. 437. It is possible that The harvest , c. 1877, was also in his possession; see letter 624, n. 6. A letter written by Gauguin to Pissarro in the summer of 1883 reveals that he had two paintings by Cézanne lined by Latouche at 34 rue Lafayette. See Correspondance Gauguin 1984, pp. 50-51, 386 (n. 115). Regarding Latouche, see letter 630, n. 10.

31. Van Gogh is referring to the first attack of his illness; see letter 728, n. 1.

32. This was possibly a certain Dr Mercurin. See Doiteau and Leroy 1928, p. 64.