1. On Tuesday, 16 July 1889, Mrs van Gogh wrote the following to Theo and Jo about the present letter: ‘And now I must tell you that I indeed received such a nice letter from Vincent last week. Oh, how glad I was to get it, I had written to him, among other things: do you know I’ll be turning 70 in September, and now he writes so nicely about that, and he’s so happy about you too, and about the country there and about Holland and so warm-hearted about Cor, and when he thinks about some of the nature and the crops, that later perhaps, missing them here, he’ll find them again if he returns to Normandy or Brittany. I cannot tell you how grateful I am for that letter. May God grant that things will improve for him and that things will go well for Cor and you too, dear children’ (FR b2406).

2. Theo had written this in letter 762.

3. Van Gogh was presumably thinking here of the Australian painter John Peter Russell.

4. Regarding Gauguin’s stay in Martinique, see letter 623, n. 3. Gauguin had lived from October to December 1888 with Van Gogh in the Yellow House in Arles.

5. ‘De Pruuvers’ (The tasters) is the first novella in the volume Etsen naar het leven (Etchings from life) by H. Hollidee; see letter 498, n. 1. The passage Van Gogh describes is not, as he maintains, from ‘De Pruuvers’, but from the story ‘Gekleurde figuren’ (Coloured figures). The narrator of that story recalls how, as a sick boy, he heard reassuring noises and experienced a ‘blissful feeling when, after such a frightening night, the realization of security flooded my soul, while I, listening to the clatter of tea-trays on the floor, to the clanging of dustpan and brush, sank into the downy arms of a deep, restful sleep’ (pp. 119-120).

6. The red vineyard (F 495 / JH 1626 ). This was part of the third consignment of paintings from Arles (see letter 767).