Beach at Scheveningen in Calm Weather

This is about as early as Van Gogh the painter gets. In August 1882 he was living in The Hague, just teaching himself to work in oils, and he carried his paints out to the fishing beach at Scheveningen and worked in the open air. It may be his first outdoor oil landscape. He was thrilled with the medium, telling Theo that oil was a powerful way to say things. Look closely and there are grains of sand caught in the paint, blown off the beach into the wet surface. He later abandoned this canvas with dozens of others when he left his family's house, and its survival is something of a fluke.