File:Van Gogh 1881-12, Etten - Scheveningen Woman Sewing F 869 JH 83.jpg
Van Gogh 1881-12, Etten - Scheveningen Woman Sewing F 869 JH 83.jpg
Vincent van Gogh: Young Scheveningen Woman Seatded: Facing Left    Artist artist QS:P170,Q5582 Title English: Young Scheveningen Woman Seatded: Facing Left Object type watercolor painting  Date December 1881 date QS:P571,+1881-12-00T00:00:00Z/10 Medium watercolor medium QS:P186,Q22915256 Dimensions height: 48 cm (18.8 in); width: 35 cm (13.7 in) dimensions QS:P2048,48U174728 dimensions QS:P2049,35U174728 Collection P. and N. de Boer Foundation Object history Miss Margot Begemann, Nuenen H.D. van Stipriaan Luisciss, The Hague J.F.D. Scheltema, The Hague Sale Amsterdam [Brandt] 18 November 1963, 103 Amsterdam, P. and N. de Boer Foundation [R1970] Exhibition history 1964 Laren, 28 1966 Laren, 88 Inscriptions Signed in lower left: Vincent Notes Catalogues raisonnés: F869: Faille, Jacob Baart de la (1970) [1928] The Works of Vincent van Gogh. His Paintings and Drawings, Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff, no. 869 . JH83 : Jan Hulsker (1980), The Complete Van Gogh, Oxford: Phaidon, no.  83. See also F871 and F870, as well as the sketches in letter 192. Executed in the Hague while on a visit to Anton Mauve (Etten period). It is one of three such watercolors of young women from Scheveningen (a fishing village near The Hague), all illustrated with sketches in letter 192 to his brother Theo 18 December 1881. Vincent was pleased with these watercolors and thought them salable. However he eventually found watercolor too intractable and demanding a medium and, despite the advice of Mauve and others, concentrated instead on figure drawing from life when he set up his studio in The Hague at the start of the following year. (Naifeh & Smith, pp. 257, 267). He appears to have later given the drawing to Margot Begemann, a wealthy spinster and neighbour in Nuenen (seat of his last family home) thirteen years his senior, to whom he eventually proposed marriage. Margot apparently welcomed his attentions but the affair came to nothing, Margot being if anything more highly wrought than even Vincent (letter 464 n. 1, n. 15, Naifeh & Smith pp. 400-5). Letters Letter 192 to Theo van Gogh. The Hague, on or about Sunday, 18 December 1881. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Van Gogh Museum. "I’m still going to Mauve’s every day, during the day to paint, in the evenings to draw. Have now painted 5 studies and 2 watercolours, and naturally a few scratches. ... I still have all kinds of things to tell you which you’ll perhaps be interested in, about the way of working from a model at Etten, but as I already said, I’ll write to you about this later – soon. I’m sending you herewith scratches of the two watercolours. I have every hope of making something saleable within a relatively short time, yes, believe that if necessary it ought to be possible to sell these two. Especially the one in which M. has added some touches. But I’d prefer to keep them myself for a while, the better to remember various things regarding their execution. How marvellous watercolour is for expressing space and airiness, allowing the figure to be part of the atmosphere and life to enter it." Letter 464 to Theo van Gogh. Nuenen, Thursday, 2 October 1884. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Van Gogh Museum. "Theo, I feel such damned pity for this woman [Margot Begemann], precisely because her age and just possibly a liver and gall bladder disorder are hanging so fatally over her head. And this is made worse by the emotions. Still, we’ll see what can be done or what’s made impossible by fate. I’ll do nothing, though, without a very good doctor, so I shan’t do her any harm. Yet it was at precisely this time that it happened that I was asked to make a drawing or painted sketch for 20 guilders. Which I duly acceded to, but because I suspected, and on investigation found my suspicion was correct, that Margot Begemann was behind it and would have given me the money indirectly, I most decidedly refused the payment but not the drawing, which I sent. It’s not easy to refuse it, though, when one is sorely in need of money. But it would have been a bridge of asses — so — ... [c.f. n.1, n.15]" References Naifeh, Steven; Smith, Gregory White. Van Gogh: The Life. Profile Books, 2011. ISBN 978-1846680106 RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History Source/Photographer ISBN 978-3-8321-9158-0, p.25 Permission (Reusing this file)