View of a Town with Drawbridge

This is one of the last things Van Gogh painted in Nuenen, the Dutch village where his father was the pastor. It dates from around October 1885 and belongs entirely to his sombre Dutch years, the browns and greys and dull greens he'd used a few months earlier for The Potato Eaters. He was 32, still teaching himself to paint, convinced that serious art had to be earthy and dark. Within weeks he packed up and left for the city of Antwerp, and everything began to shift. There he saw Rubens' warm flesh tones, bought a few cheap Japanese woodblock prints, and started to wonder whether colour could carry a picture. A year later he was in Paris among the Impressionists and the dark palette fell away for good. So a modest brown town view like this one, with its little drawbridge, is Van Gogh just before the change. It's in a private collection and rarely seen in public.