1886
Anvers 86
You decided to go to Anvers for the Museums
You needed to see paintings
and
to develop in the workshops
You discovered Japanese engravings and they astound you,
You like painting portraits of common people,
Figures
83-85
In La Haye, you work like hell and improve a lot
You master perspective thanks to a frame (made after a drawing by Dürer).
You make all kinds of technical attempts, with chalk, lithograph ink
When you leave La Haye to seek shelter in the Drenthe, you have really improved
your method
I draw as I write, fluently
But life in Drenthe is too hard
Once more, you have to
seek shelter
at your parents home, in Nuenen
You paint a peasants graveyard, the family house and birds nests
that you collect.
Then the weavers will attract you
Before leaving Nuenen, you set to realize a great composition
The Potato Eaters for which you made dozens of studies about hands,
faces, position
Your first masterpiece...
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 wont ever stop drawing...