A antiga torre do cemitério em Nuenen

Van Gogh painted this in the spring of 1885, in the Dutch village of Nuenen, where his father had been the Protestant minister until his sudden death a few weeks earlier. The old tower in the picture was a genuine ruin. Its medieval church had already been pulled down, and as Van Gogh worked the tower itself was being dismantled and sold off for scrap. It came down that June. He drew and painted it dozens of times during his months in the village. He wrote to his brother Theo that he had wanted to show how the peasants buried in its shadow return to the same earth they spent their lives digging. By the time Van Gogh left Nuenen that autumn, the tower was already gone.