page_title: Meadows near Rijswijk and the Schenkweg
section_title: Sorrow
hierarchical_section_title: Meadows near Rijswijk and the Schenkweg / Other locations / On the street / Sorrow
caption_attribution_description: English: Charles Bargue - Drawing Course Plate III-24 Man seated upon the ground, his head on his knees
context_page_description: Meadows near Rijswijk and the Schenkweg is a watercolor by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh that he made in January 1882, shortly after taking up residence in The Hague.
  It shows the view from his studio window on the outer reaches of The Hague at the Schenkweg, then undergoing a period of urban development. The view is across the Schenkweg ditch towards the newly constructed Rijnspoor railway station, built for the Utrecht-Gouda-The Hague railway, and now the Den Haag Centraal railway station. Rijswijk was then a small rural community to the south, bordering Delft but stretching all the way to The Hague. The land on which the Rijnspoor was built was ceded to The Hague by Rijswijk. It is now a suburb of The Hague.
  The painting is amongst the very first paintings by van Gogh. Although he had been drawing for many years and occasionally applied watercolor washes, he did not take up painting proper until his study visit to his cousin-in-law and mentor Anton Mauve at The Hague in December 1881.
context_section_description: Van Gogh drew his famous nude study of Sien, Sorrow, in April 1882. There were originally three versions, two being imprints, of which two survive. F929 (right) is the signed pencil version he gave to van Rappard. The other surviving version, F929a, worked up in chalk and decorated with flowers and a quotation from Michelet, "How is it possible that a woman can be left alone on earth – abandoned?", comes from the estate of Jo Bonger, Theo's wife, but is not thought to be the one he sent to Theo, which was a pencil version and is now lost (that is to say, van Gogh kept the surviving chalk version with the Michelet quotation for himself). Regarding Sien's situation, it is noteworthy that in those days for a woman to be abandoned by her husband was considered grounds for withholding charity, as she was supposed to have necessarily brought her downfall on herself.
  Van Gogh no doubt wanted to portray downfall in his original version of the drawing, but in a letter describing a later larger version he made soon after (also lost) he makes it clear that his program, in that version at any rate, was to depict something of life's struggle, a rare commentary on his intentions. Naifeh and Smith point out that van Gogh's final break with Mauve occurred less than a week later following that letter, implying that he was preparing the ground in his letter for the inevitable exposure of his affair with Sien.
  According to van Gogh himself, the inspiration for the strong contour line was a woodcut after Millet, La grande bergère assise (left). Later, at Arles, he made a painting, The Shepherdess, F699, of the same subject. However, Hulsker thought the strongest influence was Bargue's Exercices au Fusain (Exercises in Charcoal Drawing), part of his celebrated Cours de Dessin (Drawing Course) published by Goupil (left), which Tersteeg had lent van Gogh in September 1880 and which van Gogh had said in a letter immediately preceding he had completed 'several times'. The course itself was not returned to Tersteeg until June 1883 at a meeting where Tersteeg again repeated his advice that van Gogh should concentrate on making watercolors rather than drawings.
  
  Van Rappard was given the drawing in return for a gift of 2.50  guilders he had given van Gogh to get a tear in one of his drawings repaired:
  "Rappard's visit cheered me up; he seems to be working hard.
  He gave me 2.50 guilders because he saw a tear in a drawing and said, you should have that repaired. I know, I said, but I haven’t got the money and the drawing must be sent off. Then he said straightaway that he’d be glad to give it to me, and I could have had more but I didn’t want to, and I gave him a pile of woodcuts and a drawing in return. It was one of those meant for C.M. [Uncle Cor], and so I was very glad to be able to get it repaired, because it was the best of them all.
  That same drawing may be sold later for 50 guilders or so, and now — I hadn’t got the money to have a tear in it repaired. 
  Anyway."
  On 7 February 2005, the drawing was sold at Christie's in London for £680,000. On 20 June 2012, the drawing fetched £1,329,250 at the same auction house.
caption: Charles Bargue – Man seated upon the ground, his head on his knees, plate III-24 of the Cours de Dessin
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