1882-05 · The Hague · Knot of Silence

The Hague and Sien

He wrote that he intended to stand with her. The letters do not turn that intention into a simple ending.

F929 Sorrow 1882

Painting

Sorrow is not an oil painting. It is a black-pencil drawing, 44 × 27 cm. A naked woman sits on the ground, knees clasped to her chest, face buried in her arms. She is thin enough to count the ribs. Beneath her, a line: "How can it be that there is, on earth, a woman alone — abandoned." This is not a nude, and not a rescue drama, but a testimony about abandonment — drawn with the simplest pencil he had, for the people he believed the world had thrown away.
On 10 April 1882, he sent Theo a version of Sorrow and called it "the best figure I've drawn." It was not a victory lap: in the same letter he said he wanted to make around thirty nude studies.
In the same period, he took a perspective frame, made to Cassagne's specifications, to the shore, fields and dikes. It was a rectangular opening divided by strings and made with a blacksmith's help; he set it before his eyes and looked through it as through a window. He would later leave the device behind, but in The Hague it trained him to bring bodies, streets and the blank sheet under one proportion.

Letter

May 1882, The Hague. He told Theo that he had met a pregnant, ill woman in the cold, someone he had already drawn before. The family disapproved; his teacher Mauve stopped teaching him. He lived with Sien, with her child and another in her belly. He wrote: "If a woman is alone, abandoned — she cannot be bad." This was a brief attempt at family: the tenderness was real, the pressure was real, and so were the inequality and misunderstanding.

Place

The Hague, the edge of Scheveningen — a half-basement in a workers' district, damp, unheated, a window to a sea he barely painted. He drew Sien, her mother, the soup-kitchen old, infants leaving the maternity ward. This was 1882, his second year as an artist; he was thirty, living with a pregnant woman the whole family had told him to leave. This was the brief family he tried, and the closest he came to the "home" he imagined.

before

He wanted to paint workers and poor people, and to live among them rather than observe from a distance. Sien was pregnant and raising a child in precarious circumstances when he met her in The Hague.

now

They lived together, against the wishes of Theo and the family. In letters 226 and 248, Vincent explicitly said that he intended to marry Sien, and wished to preserve the lives of her and her two children. This cannot be reduced to "rescue": the letters also show his need for a home, companionship, and work.

after

The relationship ended the following year. The surviving letters do not establish one sufficient reason for the separation; the later record is sparse.

Events

1882-01 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 222
Met Sien Hoornik on a street corner — pregnant, without a coat. Decided to make her his model
1882-05 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 224
Wrote to Theo: 'I have found a model — a woman who is pregnant, whom I drew once this winter.'
1882-05 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 224
Completed Sorrow — pencil drawing, 44 × 27 cm. Wrote Michelet's line beneath: 'How can it be that there is, on earth, a woman alone — abandoned.'
1882-06 The Ferocious Reader · Letter 228
Copied entire passages of Michelet's La femme and L'amour into letters to Theo. Zola's Le ventre de Paris sat on his desk
1882-07 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 228
Wrote: 'I feel that my work lies in the heart of the people — that I must keep close to the ground.' Moved in with Sien, forming a brief family
1882-09 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 232
His teacher Mauve broke off contact; Theo's allowance became the only income. He began experimenting with watercolour — the colour experimenter was already practising the language of colour even in his drawing years
1883-09 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 245
Under family pressure he was forced to leave Sien. The closest thing to a family in his life ended abruptly — back into the silence of letters

From the Letters

Ik heb een model gevonden — een vrouw die zwanger is en die ik dit winter al eens geteekend heb.

I have found a model — a woman who is pregnant and whom I drew once this winter.

Letter 224

Hoe kan het dat er op aarde een vrouw alleen is — verlaten — als die vrouw niet slecht is.

How can it be that there is on earth a woman alone — abandoned — if that woman is not bad.

Letter 224

Ik voel dat mijn werk in het hart van het volk ligt, dat ik mij in mijn werk moet houden aan de grond.

I feel that my work lies in the heart of the people, that I must keep close to the ground in my work.

Letter 228

Letter Sources

Van Gogh letter records referenced on this page, linked to the Van Gogh Letters Project. vangoghletters.org