Vincent van Gogh drew and painted a series of works of his mistress Sien during their time together in the Netherlands. In particular, his drawing Sorrow is widely acknowledged as a masterwork of draftsmanship, the culmination of a long and sometimes uncertain apprenticeship in learning his craft.[1][2]
Commonly called Sien Hoornik, Clasina Maria Hoornik (1850–1904) lived with van Gogh during much of his time in The Hague from 1881 to 1883. Van Gogh used Sien, a pregnant prostitute, as a model for his work and later took Sien and her daughter into his home. Van Gogh made drawings and paintings of Sien and her daughter, baby and mother over that period, which reflected the domestic life and hardships of the working poor. Their relationship was not accepted by his family or supporters, although his brother Theo did not withdraw his support over it.[3] It did contribute undoubtedly, however, to a split with Anton Mauve, a cousin-in-law and noted painter of the Hague School, who had introduced van Gogh to painting as well as supporting him financially, and whom van Gogh revered.[4][5] At his brother Theo's urging, van Gogh left Sien in 1883 to paint in Drenthe, ending the only domestic relationship he would ever have.[6]
Sien resumed her life as a seamstress, cleaning woman and likely prostitute before marrying in 1901. On 22 November 1904, aged 54, she threw herself into the Schelde river and drowned, fulfilling a prediction she had made to van Gogh in 1883: "what the bad moods are is still more desperate ... 'it's bound to end up with me jumping into the water.'"[7][8][9][10]
In the summer of 1881, van Gogh fell in love with his recently widowed first cousin, Kee Vos Stricker. He proposed marriage, but was rebuffed with an adamant "no, nay, never" ("nooit, neen, nimmer"). Undeterred, he nevertheless continued to press his attentions despite the increasing dismay and disapproval of his family which eventually led to his leaving the family home for a while to study drawing at The Hague with his cousin-in-law Anton Mauve.[11][12]
Mauve was a successful and noted artist, a leading member of the Hague School and a master colorist whose paintings found a ready market both home and abroad. He had married van Gogh's cousin, Ariëtte (Jet) Carbentus, in 1874 while she was still very young and he was already established and successful, and as such was lionised by the van Gogh family. At the time, he was busy with his massive Fishing Boat on the Beach that he was preparing for the next year's Salon, but he nevertheless found time for van Gogh to advise him on his drawings, inviting him to return in a few months time to review progress.[13][14]
After a last, humiliating effort to win Kee over, an episode that severely rocked his religious faith, van Gogh returned to his parents' home in Etten in late 1881.[11][15] On Christmas Day that year, he refused to attend church, provoking a violent quarrel with his father, a pastor, which resulted in his leaving home the very same day.[16]
He returned to The Hague and studied further under Mauve. Mauve helped him to establish a modest studio on the Schenkweg on the outer fringes of The Hague, lending him money to purchase furniture, and introduced him to the Pulchri Studio, The Hague's most important art society in which he himself played a major role. He also introduced van Gogh to painting, first in oils and then with watercolor.[13][17][18]
Sien
The Great Lady, sketch in letter 215, Van Gogh Museum (F-, JH128)
At the end of January 1882, on his own account, van Gogh met a homeless, pregnant prostitute named Clasina (Sien) Maria Hoornik who had been deserted by the father of the child she was carrying. The exact date of this meeting is not known beyond van Gogh's dating of it in a letter to Theo written in May.[15] However, another letter written mid-January mentions he was negotiating modelling with "a mother with a little child" and it does seem plausible this was Sien.[18] It has also been suggested that the woman he "found" following his humiliating rejection by his cousin Kee Vos, as described in a letter to Theo around 23 December the preceding year and immediately before his final estrangement from his father that Christmas Day, was in fact Sien, although there is no direct evidence for the surmise.[20][21] Based on the dates, van Gogh could not have been the father of the child.[22]
Sien was born in 1850, the eldest of ten children of Pieter Hoornik, a porter in the poor district of the Geest, and his wife. Pieter died in 1875. To provide for the family, Sien and her mother worked as seamstresses and cleaned homes. Their earnings were supplemented by what Sien's brother, Pieter, could provide from the income of his chair-making business. The family often relied upon public assistance. For a time Sien and some of her siblings lived at a Catholic orphanage, relying on assistance from the public soup kitchen and church charities. So meager were her earnings, she turned to prostitution for a better income. By the age of 32, the unmarried Sien had given birth to four children, two of whom lived: Maria Wilhelmina, born about 1877, and Willem, born July 1882. Sien experienced poor health due to the post-operative effects of earlier surgeries, illness, and venereal disease, which she seems to have passed to van Gogh, who was hospitalized in June 1882 for gonorrhea.[23]
Sien posed for van Gogh throughout the winter. In exchange, van Gogh provided Sien and her daughter with a place to live and food to eat. Sien was ill when he met her and he did what he could to nurse her back to health. Van Gogh considered marrying Sien to take care of her and keep her off the streets.[21] He envisioned a life where Sien would be his helpmate, helping him further his artistic career. Sien wanted to be married to him, too, even though he was poor. His family, including his brother and supporter Theo, opposed the relationship and his hope for continued support was doubtful.[24]
In June 1882, van Gogh was hospitalized for gonorrhea. Disobeying doctor's orders, he left the hospital July 1 to visit Sien in Leiden, where she had just given birth to a baby boy. Van Gogh moved to a larger studio next door with Sien and her two children. Sien required an extended period of recovery from a difficult pregnancy and delivery. The baby boy, though, seemed to bring much happiness to van Gogh. He explained that while he endeavored to go deeper as an artist, he was also looking to do so as a man.[25]
Reaction to his relationship with Sien
Anton Mauve – Ariëtte (Jet) Carbentus, the Artist's Wife, in the Dunes. Jet Carbentus was a cousin of Van Gogh on his mother's side.
As a result of his relationship with Sien, van Gogh experienced the loss of support and goodwill from family and friends and his relationship with his parents was further strained.[25] His teacher and cousin-in-law, Anton Mauve, abruptly ceased his support and tutelage within a few weeks of Van Gogh first meeting Sien, although there were other factors involved as well, not least their mutual melancholy.[27][28] Hulsker called this a simple tragedy for van Gogh.[29] Likewise, a long-standing family friend, Hermanus Tersteeg, an influential art dealer who taught Vincent and his brother Theo a great deal about art and literature, and who gave Vincent his first set of art supplies when he decided to become an artist, although he was always somewhat equivocal in his support, abruptly withdrew at the same time.[30][31]
Anton Mauve – Fishing boat on the beach, 115 x 172 cm. This was the painting Mauve was working on at the time of his dealings with Van Gogh. It was shown in May at the 1882 Salon. Gemeentemuseum, The Hague.
Van Gogh's relationship with Mauve in truth had scarcely lasted a month.[33] Already by the end of January, he was writing his brother Theo that he did not always find it easy to get along with Mauve.[28] Shortly after this, they fell out with each other over an issue involving drawing from plaster casts, which Mauve was anxious van Gogh should undertake to perfect his technique. Van Gogh, however, vehemently insisted on drawing from models, and in a fit of pique destroyed some plaster casts of hands and feet that Mauve had given him to make studies from. Following that incident, Mauve said he would have nothing more to do with him for the next two months (i.e., for the rest of the winter).[34][35] In reality, Mauve had resolved to break with Van Gogh completely. Van Gogh initially blamed Tersteeg for Mauve's indifference, but a chance meeting with Mauve in May made it clear to him that Mauve had definitively broken with him. He described the meeting in a letter to Theo, and in the same letter he revealed his relationship with Sien for the first time and passionately defended it:[5][36]
People suspect me of something... it's in the air... I must be hiding something... Vincent is keeping something back that may not be divulged.. Well, gentlemen, I’ll tell you – you who set great store by manners and culture, and rightly so, provided it's the real thing – what is more cultured, more sensitive, more manly: to forsake a woman or to take on a forsaken one?
Van Gogh left Sien the autumn of 1883 and went to Drenthe to paint. Sien went back to work as a seamstress, charwoman and possibly as a prostitute. Her children, Maria and Willem, lived with Sien's mother and brother Pieter. In 1901, Sien married a seaman, Anton van Wijk. She committed suicide in 1904 at the age of 54 in Rotterdam's harbor, 14 years after van Gogh's death.[37]
Depiction of families
Francis Montague Holl – Want: Her poverty, but not her will, consents, 1876. The print depicts a woman hesitatingly pawning her wedding ring while the pawnbroker and his assistant look on pityingly. Cited by Van Gogh in a letter to his contemporary and mentor Anthon van Rappard defending his relationship with Sien: "Her only chance of surviving ... was to lead a well-ordered, domestic life. ... As to her life, I believe that, like me, you don’t condemn fallen women."Hubert von Herkomer – Gipsy Woman with Child, 1870 (Herkomer's first work for The Graphic)
Throughout his career, van Gogh made few portraits of his close artistic friends or family members. In particular, no portraits were thought to exist even of his brother Theo, by far the closest to him. However, in 2011, the Van Gogh Museum's senior researcher, Louis van Tilborgh, announced that he was satisfied that one of the many self-portraits by Vincent van Gogh is in fact a portrait of his brother Theo. His conclusion was based on a number of striking differences between their features. Theo's portrait, made in 1887, shows a man with shaved cheeks. Theo's beard is not red like Vincent's, but more ochre. On top of that, this man's ear has a fine rounded shell, unlike Vincent's but like Theo's.[40]
By August 1882, he had taken up painting in oils in earnest but, despite a promising start, abruptly abandoned it after a month, not to resume again until the following summer. Part of the reason was undoubtedly the expense of painting in oils, but Naifeh and Smith suggest the real reason was that at that time his heart lay in drawing. In his moving letter of 16 May 1882, describing his final humiliation from the family of Kee Vos and how he had come to meet Sien and his relationship with her, he wrote:[15]
I want to go through the domestic joys and sorrows myself so that I can draw them from experience. After I had left Amsterdam I felt that my love, which was truly honest, truly unfeigned and strong, had been literally beaten to death – yet after death one rises from the dead. Resurgam. Then I found Christien ...
By September, Sien had recovered from her difficult confinement and was ready to pose again. At the same time, van Gogh had discovered his orphan man, Adrianus Jacobus Zuyderland, who was to become his favourite and most patient model. With the winter drawing in and working outdoors increasingly difficult, van Gogh retreated to his studio and returned to drawing figures. He used the remaining canvas from his work in oils to shutter his windows and adjust the light falling on his models.[43]
The works of Sien, a 32-year-old prostitute and seamstress, often depict her in traditional domestic feminine roles: a mother, seamstress, and domestic worker.[44] In the drawing Sorrow (F929, F929a) and a subsequent lithograph (F1655), Sien represents a woman's sorrow and frailty.[1][45] Some of the works are iconic, such as Woman Seated (F935, JH143) and Mother with Child.[41] When van Gogh made drawings of Sien sewing, the compositions were simple as was her work. If she had been in a higher station in life, a painting of her sewing would no doubt have shown her performing embroidery. Rather than being an activity for enjoyment, Sien's sewing was one of drudgery.[46]
Regarding Woman Seated, it is curious that he posed Sien in a dress identical to one worn by Kee Vos Stricker, as can be verified by the photograph of Kee Vos and her son catalogued in the Dutch national archive Geheugen van Nederland and held in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (reproduced top left).[22][47][48]
In a letter van Gogh mentioned how he considered Sien his helpmate or partner in the creation of the works which depicted her.[49] He would write Theo about his relationship with Sien, saying that it wasn't exactly love between them but rather a mutual understanding. Vincent took Sien off the streets and provided for her and her children, and in return she posed for him.[21]
Sien with a cigar, sitting on the floor beside the fireplace, pencil, black chalk, pen and brush, sepia, washed and heightened with white, April 1882, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands (F898, JH141) [50]
Sien in a White Bonnet, pencil, black lithographic chalk, washed, December 1882, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (F931, JH291) [51]
Woman Seated, pencil, pen and brush in black ink, brown/sepia wash, white opaque watercolour, traces of squaring, on laid paper (two sheets), April 1882, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands (F935, JH143) [48][52][53]
Two women strolling (pregnant Sien and her mother), pencil, first half of 1882, Private collection, Netherlands (F988a, JH148)
Sien, Sewing, Half-Figure, pencil, black mountain chalk 1883, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (F1025, JH346) [54]
Sien with Umbrella and Prayer Book, pencil, black chalk, 1882, Private collection, (F1052, JH101). The signature at the lower left is false. Hulsker considers this to be one of the earliest Sien drawings.
Sien Peeling Potatoes, black chalk, 1883, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, The Netherlands [on loan from Paul Citroen] (F1053a, JH358)
Sien with the baby, Willem
Sien Nursing Baby, Half-Figure, drawing, 1882, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands (F1062)
Sien Nursing Baby, drawing, 1882, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands (F1063)
Sien Nursing Baby, drawing, 1882, Private collection (F1064)
Sien Nursing Baby, Half-Figure, drawing, 1882, Private collection, (F1065)
Sien Nursing Baby, watercolor, 1882, Private collection (F1068)
Sien with Child on her Lap, drawing, 1882, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands (F1071)
Woman (Sien) with Baby on her Lap, Half-Figure, September 1882 (F1061)
Sien's daughter, Maria
Sien's daughter with scarf, January 1883, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands (F1007)
Sien, Sitting on a Basket, with a Girl, 1883, Natural black, chalk, pen and brush in brown-black ink (possibly black originally), black watercolour, opaque grey watercolour, grey (?) wash, scratched, on wove paper, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F1072, JH341) [8]
Girl Kneeling by a Cradle, (Maria and Willem), March 1883, drawing (pencil, charcoal, heightened with white), Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F1024)
Sien's Mother's House, Closer View, drawing, 1882, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California (F942)
Public soup kitchen
Quite poor, Sien's family often relied upon the public soup kitchen for food.[55]
Hulsker called the signed drawing The Public Soup Kitchen (F1020a below) important and attractive.[56] Van Gogh and his contemporary George Hendrik Breitner had sketched together at a soup kitchen in the Geest (it is not known which of the several possibilities it was). After going to the trouble and expense of installing shutters in his windows to adjust the light and to recreate the scene itself in his studio, van Gogh was able to study his models at leisure.[57][58] In this way he was able to introduce more chiaroscuro (light and dark) in his drawing, which he executed with the natural ('mountain') chalk that Theo had sent him and whose properties he lauds in his letters.[59] All the models are from Sien's family: her mother and baby on the left, her sister, back turned, and her daughter, hair cropped as a precaution against lice, in the center, with Sien herself, superbly executed in profile, on the right.[60] The watercolor F1020b (below) is much less successful as van Gogh himself acknowledged, blaming the paper in part for not being right for the job.[59]
The Public Soup Kitchen, letter sketch, 1883, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F271)
The Public Soup Kitchen, letter sketch, 1883, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F272)
The Public Soup Kitchen, drawing, 1883, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F1020)
Soup Distribution in a Public Soup Kitchen, drawing, 1883, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (F1020a)
The Public Soup Kitchen, watercolor, 1883, Private collection (F1020b)
In popular media
In 1956 biopic about Van Gogh, Lust for Life, Christina (played by Pamela Brown) is a poor single mother and occasional prostitute who lives with Vincent.
The 2020 historical novel Sien van Gogh by Yves Saerens gives Sien a voice of her own.[61] This tale depicts her as a raw yet vulnerable and endearing woman, living at the margin of late-19th-century society.
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold, symbolic colours, and dramatic, impulsive and highly expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Only one of his paintings was known by name to have been sold during his lifetime. Van Gogh became famous after his suicide, aged 37, which followed years of poverty and mental illness.
The Potato Eaters is an oil painting by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh painted in April 1885 in Nuenen, Netherlands.
Anthonij "Anton" Rudolf Mauve was a Dutch realist painter who was a leading member of the Hague School. He signed his paintings 'A. Mauve' or with a monogrammed 'A.M.'. A master colorist, he was a very significant early influence on his cousin-in-law Vincent van Gogh.
Vincent van Gogh lived during the Impressionist era. With the development of photography, painters and artists turned to conveying the feeling and ideas behind people, places, and things rather than trying to imitate their physical forms. Impressionist artists did this by emphasizing certain hues, using vigorous brushstrokes, and paying attention to highlighting. Vincent van Gogh implemented this ideology to pursue his goal of depicting his own feelings toward and involvement with his subjects. Van Gogh's portraiture focuses on color and brushstrokes to demonstrate their inner qualities and Van Gogh's own relationship with them.
This is a chronology of the artist Vincent van Gogh. It is based as far as possible on Van Gogh's correspondence. However, it has only been possible to construct the chronology by drawing on additional sources. Most of his letters are not dated and it was only in 1973 that a sufficient dating was established by Jan Hulsker, subsequently revised by Ronald Pickvance and marginally corrected by others. Many other relevant dates in the chronology derive from the biographies of his brother Theo, his uncle and godfather Cent, his friends Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, and others.
Sorrowing Old Man (At Eternity's Gate) is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh that he made in 1890 in Saint-Rémy de Provence based on an early lithograph. The painting was completed in early May at a time when he was convalescing from a severe relapse in his health some two months before his death, which is generally accepted as a suicide.
Lying Cow is the name of two oil paintings created by Vincent van Gogh around 1882 when he was living at The Hague.
The earliest known 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. 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.
Peasant Character Studies is a series of works that Vincent van Gogh made between 1881 and 1885.
Van Gogh's family in his art refers to works that Vincent van Gogh made for or about Van Gogh family members. In 1881, Vincent drew a portrait of his grandfather, also named Vincent van Gogh, and his sister Wil. While living in Nuenen, Vincent memorialized his father in Still Life with Bible following his death in 1885. There he also made many paintings and drawings in 1884 and 1885 of his parents' vicarage, its garden and the church. At the height of his career in Arles he made Portrait of the Artist's Mother, Memory of the Garden at Etten of his mother and sister and Novel Reader, which is thought to be of his sister, Wil.
Still life paintings by Vincent van Gogh (Netherlands) is the subject of many drawings, sketches and paintings made during Vincent van Gogh's early artistic career. Most still lifes made in the Netherlands are dated from 1884 to 1885, when he lived in Nuenen. His works were often in somber colors. Van Gogh experimented with the use of light falling across objects.
Paintings of Amsterdam by Vincent van Gogh were made by Vincent van Gogh during a visit in October 1885.
The Letters of Vincent van Gogh is a collection of 903 surviving letters written (820) or received (83) by Vincent van Gogh. More than 650 of these were from Vincent to his brother Theo. The collection also includes letters van Gogh wrote to his sister Wil and other relatives, as well as between artists such as Paul Gauguin, Anthon van Rappard, and Émile Bernard.
Tree Roots is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh that he painted in July 1890 when he lived in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. The painting is an example of the double-square canvases that he employed in his last landscapes.
Sorrow is a drawing by Vincent van Gogh, produced in 1882.
Memory of the Garden at Etten (Ladies of Arles) is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh. It was executed in Arles around November 1888 and is in the collection of the Hermitage Museum. It was intended as decoration for his bedroom at the Yellow House.
Houses at Auvers is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh. It was created towards the end of May or beginning of June 1890, shortly after he had moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town northwest of Paris, France.
The 'Laakmolen' near the Hague is a watercolor by Vincent van Gogh that he made in the summer of 1882. Formerly it was thought to have dated from his Etten period 1881. Following identification of the mill, historians now place it the year following.
Marsh with Water Lilies is a drawing by Vincent van Gogh. It was executed at Etten in June 1881.
1 2 Brooks, D. "Woman Sewing, with a Girl". The Vincent van Gogh Gallery, endorsed by Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. David Brooks (self-published). Retrieved 23 February 2011.
↑ "Van Gogh and Tersteeg". Permanent Collection. Van Gogh Museum. 2005–2011. Archived from the original on 15 September 2012. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
↑ Brooks, D. "Bent Figure of a Woman (Sien?)". The Vincent van Gogh Gallery, endorsed by Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. David Brooks (self-published). Retrieved 16 February 2011.
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