Fedeli all'uscita della chiesa riformata di Nuenen

Van Gogh began this in early 1884, in the village of Nuenen where his father was the Protestant pastor. It was a small gift for his mother, who was laid up with a broken leg, and at first it was just the little church, a hedge, and bare winter trees, with a peasant in the foreground. Then in March 1885 his father died suddenly. Vincent went back into the picture, painted out the peasant, and added the congregation filing out in dark clothes, several of them in mourning. So the churchgoers you see were put there after the funeral, over a scene first painted for a different reason. Years later, in 2002, thieves took it from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It was missing for 14 years before turning up near Naples, in the hands of an Italian crime clan.