Vincent van Gogh

C. Mouwen Jr., Breda
Oldenzeel Gallery, Rotterdam
Eduard van Biema, The Haague
Feliz Hirschel, Amsterdam
P. Verschure, Rotterdam
Daimaru, Japan
Private Collection, Japan (acquired from the above in the 1960s)
Thence by descent

Rotterdam, Oldenzeel Gallery, Van Gogh, 1903, no. 33

Jacob Baart de la Faille, L'Oeuvre de Vincent Van Gogh, Catalogue raisonné, tableaux, vol. II, Paris, 1928, no. 196, illustrated pl. LIII
Jan Hulsker, The New Complete Van Gogh, Paintings, Drawings, Sketches, Amsterdam, 1996, illustrated p. 211

Oil on paper laid down on panel. The panel is sound. There is a layer of varnish preventing the UV light from fully penetrating, however UV examination does reveal retouching along all extreme edges, with some spots towards the right most tree and some fluorescence to the lower left and right quadrants. A minor panel and associated paper loss visible towards the left of the lower edge. This work is in good condition.
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The nearly two years spent in Nuenen, in the southern Netherlands, were very productive in van Gogh’s early artistic career. The present work was painted in 1885, at the very end of this period, just before his departure for Antwerp; his celebrated masterpiece De Aardappeleters (The Potato Eaters), now in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, was painted at this same time. In March of 1885, van Gogh’s father, the Reverend Theodorus van Gogh, collapsed on the threshold of the family home, where the artist still lived. The experience was profoundly influential on this transitional period in van Gogh’s oeuvre. By May, following his father’s death, the artist left the parsonage and rented a small studio and sleeping quarters on his own in town.

 “I have lately been making some studies of the fall landscape outdoors,” wrote van Gogh in October of 1885 (quoted in Jan Hulsker, op. cit., p. 208). The works created in October and November of this year, the present painting included, are all the more poignant and emotive when considered in context of the changes the artist experienced during this year, and the looser application of paint that defines the foliage prefigures the more fiercely dramatic brushwork so characteristic of his later pictures.