森の端

By 1882 Van Gogh had been calling himself a painter for barely two years, and he was still mostly drawing. This is one of his early attempts at oil, made near The Hague, a stretch of woodland floor with slim tree trunks and the light broken up among them. It is careful, a little stiff, the work of a man teaching himself. There is one more thing worth knowing. A quarter century later a Dutch collector named Helene Kröller-Müller saw it at auction and bought it for 110 guilders. It was the first Van Gogh she ever owned, and she went on to gather one of the largest collections of his work in the world, which is why the picture hangs where it does today.