1. For Gauguin’s travels to Brazil, see letter 616, n. 2; for his stay in Panama, see letter 623, n. 3.

2. For a while there was talk of Isaäcson’s going to the Transvaal. On 27 November 1889, he wrote from Amsterdam to Theo and Jo that he was planning to leave in three or four weeks (FR b1901). However, it emerges from Willemien van Gogh’s letter of 3 April 1890 to Dries and Annie Bonger that he had meanwhile abandoned his Transvaal plans (FR b2864).

3. This letter for Isaäcson (which is no longer extant) had been sent by Vincent along with letter 810 to Theo.

4. Vincent’s opinion of De Haan’s work was based only on photographs, which Theo had sent to him, of two of De Haan’s drawings (see letter 708, n. 3).

5. These five landscape studies were a painting of olive trees, Wheatfield and cypresses (F 743 / JH 1790 ), Reaper (F 619 / JH 1792 ), Field with a ploughman (F 625 / JH 1768 ) and a painting of an orchard in blossom.

6. Self-portrait with clean-shaven face (F 525 / JH 1665 ). It measures 40 x 31 cm.

7. The bedroom (F 483 / JH 1793 ).

8. Aunt Mina (Willemina), a sister of Mrs van Gogh and the widow of the Rev. J.P. Stricker, lived in Amsterdam. A letter written by Mrs van Gogh to Theo and Jo at the beginning of September 1889 reveals that Aunt Mina had a bad knee (FR b2906).

9. Landscape in the neighbourhood of Saint-Rémy (F 726 / JH 1874 ).

10. In November 1888 Van Gogh had made the painting The red vineyard (F 495 / JH 1626 ) in the vicinity of Arles.

11. Antonie (‘Toon’) Prins and Petrus (‘Piet’) Prins, who had been Vincent’s classmates at elementary school in Zundert . They were brothers of Wouterina, the Van Gogh’s maidservant, and sons of Anthonie Prins and Pieternella Konings, tenants on the Welstandshoeve no. 40 in De Wildert (south of Zundert), later no. 71. Cf. Kools 1990, pp. 52, 54, 56, 98 and 153, n. 89, and letter 145, n. 19, Map of Etten and environs, no. 39.

12. ‘Tulip mania’ refers to buying and selling a product purely for profit. See letter 409, n. 5.

13. Portrait of a man (F 703 / JH 1832 ) or Portrait of a one-eyed man (F 532 / JH 1650 ). The latter portrait was not painted in Arles – as was long assumed – but in Saint-Rémy. See exhib. cat. Essen 1990, p. 119.