page_title: Early works of Vincent van Gogh
section_title: Etten, Drenthe and The Hague
hierarchical_section_title: Early works of Vincent van Gogh / Background / Etten, Drenthe and The Hague
context_page_description: The early works of Vincent van Gogh comprise a group of paintings and drawings that Vincent van Gogh made when he was 27 and 28, in 1881 and 1882, his first two years of serious artistic exploration. Over the course of the two-year period Van Gogh lived in several places. He left Brussels, where he had studied for about a year in 1881, to return to his parents’ home in Etten, where he made studies of some of the residents of the town. In January 1882 Van Gogh went to The Hague where he studied with his cousin-in-law Anton Mauve and set up a studio, funded by Mauve. During the ten years of Van Gogh's artistic career from 1881 to 1890 Vincent's brother Theo would be a continuing source of inspiration and financial support; his first financial support began in 1880 funding Vincent while he lived in Brussels.
  In 1882 Van Gogh had an offer for a commission of paintings of The Hague however the paintings, now considered masterpieces, were not acceptable. Van Gogh started out primarily drawing and painting with watercolor. Under Mauve's tutelage Van Gogh began painting with oils in 1882.
context_section_description: In April 1881, Van Gogh moved to the Etten (Noord-Brabant) countryside in the Netherlands with his parents where he continued drawing, often using neighbors as subjects. Through the summer he spent much time walking and talking with his recently widowed cousin, Kee Vos-Stricker. She was the daughter of his mother's older sister and Johannes Stricker, who had shown warmth towards the artist.  Although Van Gogh would have liked to marry Stricker, given her decisive refusal: "No, never, never" (niet, nooit, nimmer) and his inability to support himself financially, marriage was out of the question. Van Gogh was hurt deeply. That Christmas he quarreled violently with his father, to the point of refusing a gift of money, and left for The Hague.
  In January 1882, he settled in The Hague where he called on his cousin-in-law, the painter Anton Mauve (1838–88).  Mauve introduced him to painting in both oil and watercolor and lent him money to set up a studio; however the two soon fell out, possibly over the issue of drawing from plaster casts. Mauve appears to have suddenly gone cold towards Van Gogh and did not return a number of his letters, Van Gogh supposed that Mauve did not approve of his domestic arrangement with an alcoholic prostitute, Clasina Maria "Sien" Hoornik (1850–1904) and her young daughter. He had met Sien towards the end of January, when she had a five-year-old daughter and was pregnant. On 2 July, Sien gave birth to a baby boy, Willem. Van Gogh's father put considerable pressure on his son to abandon Sien and her children. Vincent was at first defiant in the face of opposition.
  Van Gogh's art dealer uncle, Cornelis, commissioned 20 ink drawings of the city, which the artist completed by the end of May. That June, he spent three weeks in a hospital suffering from gonorrhea. That summer he began to paint in oil. In autumn 1883, after a year together, he left Sien and the two children. Van Gogh moved to the Dutch province of Drenthe, in the northern Netherlands. That December, driven by loneliness, he went to stay with his parents who were by then living in Nuenen, North Brabant.
caption: Rooftops, View from the Atelier The Hague (1882), watercolor, Private collection.
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