Painted in The Hague in August 1883, The New Church and Old Houses in The Hague is a compelling and important work from Vincent van Gogh's formative Dutch period. The Impressionist master's compositions from 1881 to 1885 are among his earliest masterpieces, and together they reveal his remarkable skill as a painter. The present piece offers a dramatic demonstration of the young van Gogh's interest in the interplay of light and shadow as he adeptly captures an atmospheric cityscape.
At the time he completed this dramatic landscape, van Gogh was nearing the end of a nearly two-year period spent in The Hague in the western Netherlands. Considered in retrospect, it was one of the most significant periods of his artistic life. He had moved to The Hague in 1881 after a row with his father, renting a studio at Schenkweg 138 only a few streets away from the artist Anton Mauve, with whom he studied. The young van Gogh was attracted to the realism of the Hague School, as well as the subdued colors and loose brushstrokes of artists such as Mauve, H.J. Weissenbruch, Jozef Israëls and Jacob Maris.
The New Church and Old Houses in The Hauge is exemplary of this important early period in van Gogh's career. With its broad brushwork, it embodies his unique and evocative take on realism, pitting atmospheric and hazy fog against an austere skyline to remarkable effect. Even in this early work, the quintessential essence of van Gogh's greatest masterpieces can be seen. His distinctive, heavy-handed brushstrokes and subtle play of color are classic van Gogh, while the work's flattened pictorial plane reflects the advance of Impressionism.
His earliest recognized masterpiece De Aardappeleters (The Potato Eaters), now in the Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam), was painted just two years after the present work. A certain likeness can be found between the two paintings, both with their earthy palettes and Realist subjects. Van Gogh had an intense fascination with such everyday scenes. They proved to be an important exploratory genre, allowing the artist to play with perspective and color while developing his own unique style.
Born the son of a pastor in Groot-Zundert, Holland, van Gogh was unsuccessful in several ventures in his early life. In 1880, van Gogh decided to study art and in 1886, he traveled to Paris to join his brother Théo, who was managing Goupil's gallery. There, van Gogh studied with Fernand Cormon and met such Impressionists as Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, and Paul Gauguin, who would become a close friend. Under their influence, he began to brighten his very dark palette and to paint using heavy brushstrokes.
Van Gogh's nervous temperament made him a difficult companion, and night-long discussions, combined with painting all day, undermined his health. In 1888, he moved to Arles where the Provençal landscape provided his best-known subject matter. Here, he hoped his friends would join him and help find a school of art. Gauguin did visit him, but with disastrous results. Some scholars have posited that it was a disagreement with Gauguin that pushed van Gogh to slice off a portion of his earlobe.
From that point, van Gogh then began to alternate between fits of madness and lucidity and was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment in 1889. He continued to paint, but the following year he committed suicide. Though his death ended a brief career devoid of artistic acclaim, van Gogh has since been exalted as one of the premier painters of all time.
The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Van Gogh Museum, and it is accompanied by a certificate of authentication.
Circa 1883
