Cart with Black Ox

This is Van Gogh before he was the Van Gogh people picture. He painted it in 1884 in Nuenen, the Dutch village where his father was the pastor, years before the sunflowers and the color of Arles. The palette is nearly all brown and black, the ground is heavy, and the ox and its cart both look worn out. When he left Nuenen the painting stayed behind with his mother, who eventually sold it to a dealer. It reached Portland in Oregon in 2007 as a gift from Fred and Frances Sohn, an Oregon couple who had kept it hanging in their dining room; Fred Sohn had survived the Holocaust before settling in the state. It's the most valuable object the museum has been given.