Weaver with a baby in a high chair, 1884
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Pencil, pen in brown ink, heightened with opaque watercolour, on wove paper, 32 x 40 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
(Vincent van Gogh Stichting)
F 1118

During the period December 1883-August 1884 Van Gogh produced sixteen independent drawings of weavers in pen or watercolour. This piece shows a weaver working intensively, in sight of a baby in a high chair. The domestic scene was inspired by the novel Silas Marner by George Eliot, in which a luckless weaver only finds happiness when a child comes into his life.