Old Man Carrying a Basket, Facing Right

August 1879 – October 1880 · Workplace

Maison Van Gogh

August 1880

Decides to take up art in earnest

Back in Cuesmes in the Borinage, lodging with a miner, Van Gogh began, at Theo's suggestion, to draw the people and scenes around him in earnest. Later that year he went to Brussels to study with Willem Roelofs, who persuaded him to enrol at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts.

late 1881

Lessons with Anton Mauve

His second cousin Anton Mauve, the successful artist Van Gogh longed to be, took him on as a student and introduced him to watercolour. Within weeks they fell out, possibly over drawing from plaster casts.

August 1881

Proposes to his cousin Kee: “No, nay, never”

His recently widowed cousin Cornelia “Kee” Vos-Stricker, seven years his senior, came to stay in Etten with her eight-year-old son. To everyone's surprise Van Gogh declared his love and proposed; she refused: “No, nay, never.”

1882

His first paintings in oil

Soon after three weeks in hospital in June 1882, Van Gogh painted in oils for the first time, with paints bought on money borrowed from Theo, and was surprised at how good the results were. In August Theo gave him money for materials to work en plein air, and Vincent wrote that he could now “go on painting with new vigour”.

late January 1882

Life with Sien Hoornik

Van Gogh met Clasina Maria “Sien” Hoornik, a pregnant prostitute with a five-year-old daughter, and set up home with her; on learning of it, Mauve stopped answering his letters. His father pressed him to abandon Sien, and in 1883 Vincent left her and the children.