Still Life with Cabbage and Clogs

1879

Missionary among the miners of the Borinage

Vincent became a missionary at Petit-Wasmes in the impoverished coal-mining Borinage in Belgium; to support his flock he gave his comfortable lodgings at a bakery to a homeless person and moved into a hut, sleeping on straw. The church authorities disapproved and dismissed him for “undermining the dignity of the priesthood”.

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.

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.