A Girl in the Street, Two Coaches in the Background

In the summer of 1882 Vincent van Gogh had been calling himself a painter for barely a year. He was living in The Hague, mostly drawing figures, when his brother Theo urged him to try color and to work outdoors. This little evening scene is one result, a young woman in a straw hat and white apron carrying a basket down a dirt road, past two carriages waiting under the trees. He seems to have painted it fast, in a single session, on a walk through the city with his easel. And he signed it simply Vincent, a sign that he was pleased, at a time when finished pictures he actually liked were still rare for him.