Torfkahn mit zwei Figuren

In September 1883 Van Gogh took a train and then a barge into Drenthe, a thinly settled province in the north east of the Netherlands that was being dug up for fuel. Whole villages lived by cutting peat out of the bog and floating it away on flat boats along the canals, and that is how he travelled himself, sitting aboard for hours watching the banks go by. He lasted about three months, ran out of money, and left in December for his parents' house in Brabant. Only a handful of paintings survive from those weeks and this loaded turf boat is one of them, made that autumn. The Drents Museum bought it in 1997, with help from a Dutch art-purchase society, which brought it back to the province it was painted in.