Original manuscript

Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. nos. b8374 a-b V/2006 (sheets 1, 2); Paris, Fondation Custodia, inv. no. 1977-A-1715 (sheet 3); whereabouts of the greater part of sheet 4 unknown.

Letters 435, 437 and 439 to Van Rappard were probably all written in March 1884. There are no points of reference from which to date them exactly. The sequence is also problematic. Letter 435 stands alone in that there are no references to other letters. On the basis of the poems copied out in it and the remark in the first sentence that he was sending some of Breton’s poems ‘too’, however, we assume that it is a follow-up to the previous batch of poems sent on or about 2 March (letter 433). We therefore regard this letter as the first of the three.

In De brieven 1990 five extra poems by Jules Breton were printed with this letter: ‘Le soir (à Louis Cabat)’ (Evening (for Louis Cabat)), ‘Les deux croix’ (The two crosses), (recto and verso of a half sheet in Paris, Fondation Custodia), as well as ‘Crépuscule (à Charles Daubigny)’ (Twilight (for Charles Daubigny)), ‘Dans la plaine’ (On the plain) and ‘Le retour des champs (à François Millet)’ (Returning from the fields (for François Millet)) (the last ones have only partly survived). These half sheets were once joined together, since the last – missing – verse of ‘Le soir’ was added in the space below ‘Le retour des champs’, as a photocopy of this sheet shows. We too assume that these fragments were originally part of the present letter. In 1957 L.H.M. Brom of Utrecht had this sheet in his possession and sent a photocopy of it to V.W. van Gogh. (Correspondence between L.H.M. Brom and V.W. van Gogh, April-September 1957, Van Gogh Museum, Documentation). Van Rappard was a leading member of the Kunstliefde association in Utrecht, where he became friends with the silversmith Jan Hendrik Brom; this Jan Brom, father of Leo, owned a study by Van Rappard, who also made his portrait. Brom probably acquired the sheet with the five poems through Van Rappard. Cf. exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1974, pp. 20, 85, 91.