In
De brieven 1990 this letter is dated on or about 1 February 1884. There are, however, several reasons for placing it two weeks earlier. First of all, Van Gogh writes that since arriving in Nuenen he has spent every day from ‘from morning till night’ working among weavers and peasants
(ll. 119-121). This means that he must have been there for some time. And then he does not refer anywhere in this letter to Mrs van Gogh’s accident – which happened on 17 January – whereas he mentions it in every letter after this date. It therefore seems reasonable to assume that the letter dates from shortly before the seventeenth. The remittance for which he thanks Theo must have been the mid-January instalment (on 18 January Vincent also mentioned the money that Theo sent (
letter 425), and later he referred once again to money sent ‘about the middle of January’ (
letter 428). This means that the present letter was written on or about Tuesday, 15 January 1884. See also Dorn in exhib. cat. Vienna 1996, p. 162 (nn. 2-3).
