Vincent Van Gogh

M. de Zwart, Voorburg (The Netherlands)
H. P. Baron van Tuyll van Serooskerken, Amsterdam (sold: F. Muller, Amsterdam, November 25, 1913, lot 126)
Sale: F. Muller, Amsterdam, December 13, 1918, lot 122
Mrs H. Kröller-Müller, The Hague (1920)
Mrs. G. Kröller-Jesse, Ede
Mrs. de Bondt, The Hague (1956)
Sale: Kornfeld und Klipstein, Bern, May 9, 1963, lot 372
Van Diemen-Lilienfeld Galleries, New York (1964)
Sale: Christie's, New York, May 17, 1977, lot 58
Private Collection, Los Angeles 

Jacob-Baart de la Faille, Vincent van Gogh, The Complete Works on Paper, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, San Francisco, 1992, no. 964b, catalogued p. 249; vol. II, illustrated pl. CCXVII
Jan Hulsker, The New Complete Van Gogh. Paintings, Drawings, Sketches, Amsterdam, 1996, no. 345, illustrated p. 83 (dated March 1883)

Homme buvant une tasse du café dates from the artist's initial years in The Hague. In early Autumn of 1881, on a visit to The Hague, Van Gogh found captivating artistic inspiration amid the daily lives of the peasants.  As he described in a letter to his brother that September, "So what seemed to be impossible before is gradually becoming possible now... I have to observe and draw everything that belongs to country life... I no longer stand helpless before nature as i used to" (The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, Greenwich, 1959, vol. 1, letter no. 150, p. 239). In the following year, Van Gogh left his family's home in Etten and returned to The Hague to begin his exhaustive and masterful studies of peasant life.  Van Gogh's portraits from this time brilliantly convey a combination of melancholy and fortitude that the artist found in his models. The present work, closely related to another from the same period (see fig. 1), displays the artist's singular ability to convey these emotions through the medium of drawing.

Throughout his artistic career, Van Gogh always returned to drawing as the most immediate translation of artistic inspiration. Around the time that he executed the present work, the artist received financial assistance from his brother, Theo, which allowed him to purchase painting materials. He subsequently wrote to Theo, "I am very glad I have the necessary materials, for already I had often suppressed the desire to paint. It opens a much broader horizon... but I have attached a great value to drawing and will continue to, because it is the backbone of painting, the skeleton that supports all the rest. I like it so much, Theo, that it is only because of the expenses that I shall have to restrain myself rather than urge myself on" (ibid., letter no. 224, p. 435).