Vincent Van Gogh in 1879-1882
You left the Borinage for Brussels where
you wanted to take drawing and perspective lessons…
Just like Millet again, your favourite painter…
And you draw peasants, Brabant types…
In Etten, you try drawing landscapes, characters, fields sceneries…
It was in La Haye that your cousin Mauve, a well-known painter, gave you your
first palette, He helped you to achieve your first watercolours…
But Mauve would turn you down a few weeks later…
You resumed drawing, and tried great compositions…
You draw Sien a lot, your new girlfriend…
You would be proud of “Sorrow”, of which you would draw your first
lithography…
It was actually in the Borinage, in the
depths of that black country, where misery was at the highest…and at
the peak of your distress…that you decided to give up religion to devote
yourself to drawing, and painting…
To become a painter at last…
77-78
/ Back to England, Vincent works in a Dordrecht bookstore, he draws mills.
Dordrecht – April 1877 / Then he draws this scene from the Bible when
Abraham begs for a sepulchre to bury Sarah.
Amsterdam – May 1877 / Laecken – November 1878 / Concerned about
his coming departure for the Borinage, he draws that warehouse of coals. When
he arrives in the Borinage, he draws miners’ huts...
Cuesmes – July 1879 / He is fascinated by the mining country... He draws
night and day... And won’t ever stop drawing...