From: Vincent van Gogh
To: Anna van Gogh
Date: unknown, second half of 1881
Source status
Original manuscript
Location
Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, inv. no. b1455 V/1978
Date
The dating of this text cannot be determined with any certainty. The poem was copied from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s We and our neighbours, which had been published in 1875 – on 19 November 1881 Vincent, writing from Etten, advised Theo to read this book (letter 187). The little drawing of a landscape with gardens and houses, Fields and houses (F - / JH -) (5.0 x 9.2 cm), which also appears on the sheet, possibly dates from Van Gogh’s period in The Hague, 1882-1883. See Verzamelde brieven 1952-1954, vol. 1, p. 294; Pabst 1988, p. 95; and cat. Amsterdam 1996, pp. 242-243.
The sheet went by descent to the heirs of Van Gogh’s sister Anna, and was bought at auction by the engineer V.W. van Gogh on 2 May 1973 (Mak van Waay, Amsterdam, no. 66a); on 11 May 1978 it became the property of the Vincent van Gogh Foundation (Van Gogh Museum, Documentation). In any case, Anna wrote a letter to Etten in August 1881 (see letter 171). If she received this sheet in a letter, it could date, judging by the above, from the last part of 1881.
Sketch
- Fields and houses (
F - / JH - ), letter sketch