Weaver

In January 1884 Van Gogh, living with his parents in the Brabant village of Nuenen, put a proposal to his brother Theo. From March, the money Theo sent every month would count as money earned, and the work Vincent made would belong to Theo. Around 20 March he wrote that he was busy with a large weaver who is weaving a piece of red cloth, and that his painted studies were Theo's property, to do with as he wished. This is that weaver. The red is the one warm note in it, caught in the dark wood of the loom against grey cottage walls. The canvas stayed with him in Nuenen. It was very probably among the work left behind when he went to Antwerp in November 1885, which his mother took with her to Breda the next year and stored in crates at a carpenter's. In 1902 the carpenter sold the crates to a junk dealer, at least 40 paintings for one guilder in all. In 1903 this weaver hung in a Van Gogh exhibition at the Oldenzeel gallery in Rotterdam, and the museum in Boston bought it from an Amsterdam dealer in 1958.