泥炭の山がある農場

In the autumn of 1883 Vincent van Gogh, then 30 and still years away from the bright canvases people know, travelled north to Drenthe, a poor, boggy province where people dug peat from the ground to burn for fuel. He had just left Sien Hoornik, the woman he had been living with in The Hague, and he arrived lonely and short of money. He painted this small farm near the village of Nieuw-Amsterdam quickly, with broad brushes, in the browns and dull greens of the heath. Writing to his brother Theo, he described the delicate green wheatfield, the withered grasses, the stacks of peat and the very light sky, and added that he believed he had found his country. He lasted only about three months there before the loneliness drove him back to his parents.