1. Gauguin’s letter to Vincent and Theo’s to Gauguin are not known. The latter must have been the reply to Gauguin’s letter to Theo of 22 May 1888. Gauguin thanked Theo for sending him 50 francs somewhere around 5-8 June. See Correspondance Gauguin 1984, pp. 176, 184.

2. This is the letter from Vincent to Gauguin, enclosed with letter 621 to Theo of 5 or 6 June. Gauguin forwarded the Van Gogh brothers’ letter, in which they suggested he might go to Arles, to Emile Schuffenecker to read, as we learn from a letter written in the second week of June. See Merlhès 1989, p. 68.

3. Gauguin and Laval sailed together from Saint-Nazaire to Panama on 10 April 1887, and then on to Martinique in about the middle of May. Weakened by malaria and dysentery, Gauguin returned to France, arriving about 13 November. See exhib. cat. Washington 1988, pp. 44-45. Laval came back to Pont-Aven later, but before about 25 July 1888; see letter 646.

4. In the letter to Emile Schuffenecker (n. 2 above) Gauguin set out his plans, for which he hoped Albert Dauprat and Henri Cottu, rich friends of Laval’s, would provide him with capital to the tune of 500,000 francs. See Wildenstein 2001, p. 610 and Merlhès 1989, p. 70.

5. Gauguin had written to Theo on 22 May 1888 and told him that by then he had already been living on credit at Madame Gloanec’s inn for three months (GAC 2).

6. Evidently Van Gogh left Antwerp without paying off his debts; this may have been one reason for his unannounced departure for Paris. Cf. letter 567.

7. A louis was a coin worth 20 francs.

8. Mourier-Petersen arrived at Theo’s apartment in rue Lepic on 6 June 1888, and stayed with him until about 15 August 1888. See Larsson 1993, pp. 26-27 (n. 95), 29.

9. This was Paul Eugène Milliet, second lieutenant in the 3rd Zouave Regiment, which was garrisoned in the Caserne Calvin, the barracks in boulevard des Lices in Arles (see letter 628). He had been in Tonkin from 12 January 1885 to 20 August 1887 (Paris, Archives Nationales, Fonds de la Légion d’honneur). Tonkin is the area that now makes up the greater part of northern Vietnam; it had been a French protectorate since 1883 and became part of French Indochina in 1887.

10. Van Gogh’s wording leads us to think that this was a related group of drawings and paintings of the same subjects. The description ‘two or three’ could indicate that the subjects were not yet all worked out to the same extent. Among the new works were in any event the drawing Farmhouse (F 1478 / JH 1444 ) and the painting based on it Farmhouse (F 565 / JH 1443 ). There was also the drawing Haystacks (F 1425 / JH 1441 ), which not long afterwards served as the preliminary study for Haystacks (F 425 / JH 1442 ). A third new drawing was The harvest (F 1483 / JH 1439 ); this, like F 1425, was filled in with different shades of watercolour and served as the preliminary study for the painting The harvest (F 412 / JH 1440 ) which Van Gogh refers to later in the letter. He had already done the drawing The harvest (F 1484 / JH 1438 ) before this. See exhib. cat. Amsterdam 2005, p. 192. Another of the new studies was Wheatfield (F 564 / JH 1475 ), an initial exploration of the subject of F 412.

11. This expedition to Tarascon, around 20 km to the north of Arles, probably took place on 10 or 11 June: the weather was hot and sunny then, and the mistral was blowing – most probably the cause of the dust he mentions (Météo-France).

12. The two drawings are The harvest (F 1484 / JH 1438 ) and The harvest (F 1483 / JH 1439 ); the painting is The harvest (F 412 / JH 1440 ).

13. Van Gogh actually means Philips de Koninck, who painted flat landscapes and was thought for a long time to have been one of Rembrandt’s pupils. Salomon Koninck was also a follower of Rembrandt, but he tended to concentrate on paintings of scholars in their studies and biblical scenes. See W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. 6 vols. Landau 1983, vol. 3, pp. 1530-1535, 1627-1630.

14. The part of Provence that Van Gogh knew is a largely flat agricultural region. In the spring of 1884 Monet had painted Mediterranean mountain landscapes in Menton in the south of France and in Bordighera, just over the Italian border. In the spring of 1888 he worked in Antibes, a resort near Nice. See Joachim Pissarro, Monet and the Mediterranean. New York 1997, pp. 74-144. Some of the works painted in 1884 could be seen from 8 May to 8 June 1887 at the Exposition internationale de peinture et de sculpture at Georges Petit’s gallery, which Theo and Vincent had gone to together. See letter 798 and Wildenstein 1996, cat. nos. 854, 855, 859.

15. In the 1881-1883 period Gauguin introduced clients to the Durand-Ruel gallery and mediated in purchases. See Correspondance Gauguin 1984, pp. 352-353.

16. After his second stay on the Breton island of Belle-Île in the summer of 1887, Russell decided to build a house for himself and his family in Port-Goulphar. He was the first foreigner to live permanently on the island. The locals called his house and studio, which he had designed himself in the style of an English manor, ‘Le Chateau de l’Anglais’ – the Englishman’s castle. See Galbally 1977, p. 45 and exhib. cat. Sydney 2001, p. 32 (with ill.). The family moved into the new house in the summer of 1888 (see letter 647).

17. Auguste Rodin’s Madame Vicuňa, 1888 (Paris, Musée d’Orsay) was exhibited at the Salon (under the title Portrait de Mme M.V...). Ill. 1292 . He did not complete the Bust of Mrs Russell, 1888-1889, silver (Morlaix, Musée de Morlaix) until later. Ill. 2184 . See exhib. cat. Sydney 2001, pp. 32, 51, 127 (cat. nos. 45-46), 129 (n. 42), and letter 647, n. 4.

a. Read: ‘probablement il boit toujours encore du cognac avec de l’eau’.