PAYSANNE DEVANT UNE
CHAUMIERE
Signed
Oil on canvas
24 3/4 by 44 1/4 in. 62.9 by 112.4 cm.
Painted in Nuenen in the summer of 1885.
Provenance
(probably) Wilhelmus Johannes Leurs, The Hague (acquired from the artist)
Private Collection, London (sale: Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, October 28, 1970, lot 18)
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph E. Levine, New York (acquired at the above sale and sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 18, 1983,
lot 29)
Private Collection, New York (acquired at the above sale and sold: Sotheby's, London, December 3, 1985, lot 14)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
Literature
Alan Bowness, "A Van Gogh Discovery," The Burlington Magazine, London, May 1969, figs. 49 and 50, illustrated pp.
298-300
Jacob-Baart de la Faille, The Works of Vincent Van Gogh: His Paintings and Drawings, New York, 1970, no. SP1669, illustrated p. 570 (titled Peasant Huts with Barns)
Paolo Lecaldano, L'opera pittorica completa di Van Gogh, da Etten a Parigi, Milan, 1971, no. 167, illustrated p. 102
Jan Hulsker, The Complete Van Gogh: Paintings, Drawings, Sketches, New York, 1980, no. 825, illustrated p. 183
Giovanni Testori and Luisa Arrigoni, Van Gogh, Catalogo completo dei dipinti, Florence, 1990, no. 174, illustrated p. 81
Ingo F. Walther and Rainer Metzger, Vincent van Gogh, The Complete Paintings, vol. I, Cologne, 1990, illustrated p. 108
Jan Hulsker, The New Complete Van Gogh: Paintings, Drawings, Sketches, New York, 1996, no. 825, illustrated p. 183
Louis van Tilborgh, "Les Quatre Saisons," Millet, Van Gogh (exhibition catalogue), MusEe d'Orsay, Paris, 1998, discussed pp. 75 and 78
The paintings van Gogh completed in Nuenen between 1883-85 are amongst the first of his early masterpieces and evidence of his distinctive technical and intepretative skill as a painter. While living at his father's vicarage in Nuenen in the Brabant region of Holland, the artist devoted much of his time to painting, and could now afford the relatively expensive medium of oil on canvas. Despite his relative professional good fortune during this period, van Gogh was often at odds with his conservative parents and began to paint with an artistic vision notably divorced from the religious idealism and subject matter of his youth. At Nuenen, the artist executed several landscapes and scenes of peasant life which demonstrated an intense interest in the interplay of light, shadow and natural forms. Some of the most notable of this genre are the Brabant cottage paintings, such as the present work which van Gogh executed during May through July of 1885. Thematically, these paintings speak of a certain sense of anxiety and isolation which the artist felt at the time and which he explored in Paysanne devant une chaumi 3/16re through the image of the peasant working alone amidst the rustic surroundings.
This work, whose location was unknown for over 80 years, was rediscovered in 1968 by a private collector in a bookstore in Hampstead, London. Dr. Louis van Tilborgh, curator of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, surmises that this painting may have been one of a group which the artist sent to Wilhelmus Johannes Leurs, his color supplier in The Hague. According to van Tilborgh, "Leurs had offered to display van Gogh's work in his shop window, and the latter hoped that he would sell something and pay off part of his hefty debt to Leurs. The consignment, which eventually went off at the end of August [1885], contained 7 paintings of various subjects and, to make it more complete, 12 smaller painted studies" (Louis van Tilborgh and Marije Vellekoop, Vincent van Gogh, Paintings, Dutch Period, 1881-1885, vol. I, London, 1999, p. 12).
Shortly after the discovery of this painting in London in 1968, X-rays taken at the Courtauld Institute revealed the presence of another painting underneath, Man Ploughing with Oxen (photograph published in The Burlington Magazine, London, May 1969, p. 298). This study of the ploughman is connected to the series the artist executed in the Autumn of 1884 for Hermans, the Eindhoven goldsmith.