Vincent Van Gogh

J.B. (Minus) Oostrijck, Etten
Sale: Van Marle & de Sille, Rotterdam, 15th-17th December 1948, lot 40
L. van Zanten Art Gallery, Rotterdam
Mainz and Legat Art Gallery, The Hague
Paul Citroen, Wassenaar
Private Collection, The Netherlands

Maasbode, 30th December 1948
Rotterdamsch Nieuwsblad, 3rd January 1949
Nieuwe Courant, 8th January 1949
De Nieuwe Gids, 1st February 1949
Jacob-Baart de la Faille, The Works of Vincent van Gogh, His Paintings and Drawings, Amsterdam, 1970, no. SD 1676, illustrated p. 574
Jan Hulsker, The Complete Van Gogh, Paintings, Drawings, Sketches, New York, 1984, no. 36, illustrated p. 20
Evert van Uitert, 'Vincent van Gogh, Painter of Peasants', in Van Gogh in Brabant, Paintings and Drawings from Etten and Nuenen, Zwolle, 1987, mentioned p. 29
Han van Crimpen & Monique Berends-Albert (eds.), De brieven van Vincent van Gogh, The Hague, 1990
Tsukasha Kodera, Vincent van Gogh. Christianity versus Nature, Amsterdam & Philadelphia, 1990, p. 29
Jacob-Baart de la Faille, Vincent van Gogh, The Complete Works on Paper, Catalogue raisonné, San Francisco, 1992, vol. I, no. 1676; vol. II, no. 1676, illustrated pl. CCXLV
Elizabeth Nicoline Heenk, Van Gogh's Drawings. An Analysis of their Production and Uses, (PhD thesis, Courtauld Insitute of Art), London, 1995, pp. 96-97 (titled Lanscape under a Stormy Sky)
Jan Hulsker, The New Complete Van Gogh, Paintings, Drawings, Sketches, Amsterdam, 1996, no. 36, illustrated p. 20
The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, London, 1999, vol. I, no. 150, mentioned p. 239

This work was executed in the summer of 1881 in Etten where Van Gogh was working, concentrating on local subjects, with the intention of securing commissions as an illustrator as a means to alleviate his perennial financial difficulties. 

In one of his regular letters to his brother Theo, Van Gogh executed a small sketch with the same composition (fig. 1) and referred to a large sketch depicting ‘a field of stubble, where they are ploughing and sowing… with a thunderstorm overhead’. Expressing his fascination with the landscape, he continued: ‘Diggers, sowers, plowers, male and female, they are what I must draw continually.  I have to observe and draw everything that belongs to country life’ (letter 150 in the Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, vol. I, London, 1958, pp. 239-46). This sensitively rendered image of peasant life with its brooding skies seems to anticipate his later charcoal works which expressively convey the wretched existence of the rural poor.

FIG.1 Sketch in the letter from Vincent to Theo van Gogh, September 1881