Study with spruce in the fall

This is a study of trees in autumn, the kind of small working canvas Vincent van Gogh turned out by the dozen. It survives because of one collector. In the years around 1910 to 1920, when van Gogh's name was only starting to carry weight, the Dutch heiress Helene Kröller-Müller bought his work in bulk, nearly 90 paintings and close to 200 drawings, the quick studies as well as the finished pictures. She wanted the whole hand at work, not only the famous images. That is why a modest autumn study hangs today in the museum she founded at Otterlo, in a stretch of Dutch heath and woodland not far from the kind of country van Gogh was looking at when he painted it.