1. In letter 776 Van Gogh had ordered canvas and paint, and in letter 777 he had asked for brushes and more canvas. Theo’s account book records under ‘Account Vincent’ on 6 June 1889 a payment of 197 francs to Tasset & Lhote, probably for the order mentioned here. See Account book 2002, p. 44.

2. This was letter 774.

3. Theo had written to Peyron on 23 May; see letter 777, n. 1.

4. The 1889 World Exhibition was held in Paris from 5 May to 5 November. Dr Peyron visited Theo in the second half of September 1889 (see letter 806).

5. Van Gogh describes one of these canvases immediately after this (n. 6); he says it depicts the view from his room, so the ‘view taken in the hills’ must refer to the other landscape. This was the underlying depiction of Ravine (F 662 / JH 1804

), which he copied in late June or early July in the drawing Wild vegetation (F 1542 / JH 1742

). See also letter 784, n. 16. In this landscape he did what he had recently resolved to do: paint the colour effects of the flowers in the fields (letter 777). At the beginning of October he painted over it (see letter 810, n. 15).

6. Wheatfield after a storm (F 611 / JH 1723

). It measures 70.5 x 88.5 cm and is therefore slightly smaller than a no. 30 canvas.

7. The bedroom (F 482 / JH 1608

) had suffered slight damage; see letter 776, n. 29.

8. Chardin often depicted loaves of bread in his still lifes and genre pieces. Van Gogh probably knew The purveyor, 1739, and The brioche, 1763 from the Louvre. See Pierre Rosenberg, Tout l’oeuvre peint de Chardin. Paris 1983, pp. 97, 108-109, cat. nos. 115 B, 167.

9. At the 1889 World Exhibition Charles Garnier built a street with 39 dwellings running from Champ de Mars to Trocadéro. Each house or hut represented a culture and a stage in the history of habitation from prehistory to modern times. The dwellings, which were nearly lifesize, were built with authentic materials. This part of the exhibition (‘Dessins et modèles d’architecture’) was titled ‘Histoire de l’habitation’. See exhib. cat. Paris 1889, p. 104, and Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas. The Expositions Universelles, great Exhibitions and World’s Fairs, 1851-1939. Manchester 1988, p. 20. Garnier's first name was Charles, not Jules. Letter 809 reveals that Van Gogh had obtained the information about the Egyptian house from an illustrated journal, though it is not known which one.

10. On Bracquemond’s etchings The servant , The table and The servant at the table , see letter 542, n. 2.

11. For Jacquemart’s The reader , see letter 686, n. 7.

12. The paint and canvas that Vincent asked Theo to order were usually sent directly to Vincent by Tasset & Lhote and Tanguy in Paris.

13. On the occasion of the World Exhibition, the ‘Groupe Impressionniste et Synthétiste’, with Gauguin as its leader, held an exhibition from 8 June through October 1889 in the Café Volpini, situated next to the Palais du Champs de Mars, where the official exhibition took place. A total of 94 works were on display: 17 by Gauguin, 20 by Schuffenecker, 23 by Bernard, 10 by Laval, 7 by Anquetin, 7 by Louis Roy, 5 by Léon Fauché, 3 by Georges-Daniel de Monfreid and 2 by Ludovic Nemo (Bernard’s pseudonym). See exhib. cat. Paris 1889-5 and Merlhès 1995, pp. 26-32. Theo had been approached to exhibit work by Vincent, but declined because he disapproved of the way the exhibition was organized. See letter 781, n. 3.