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Oil on canvas
27.5 × 36.5 cm (10.8 × 14.2 in)
Van Gogh Museum
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Europe
Painted October 1883, Nieuw-Amsterdam, Drenthe
F 19, JH 409
Living a rough life in Drenthe Vincent spent much time in the fields sketching and painting the farm workers, as the women in this work who were probably cutting peat from the moors. In a letter to Theo he describes his time in the fields. "Yesterday I drew decaying oak roots, so-called bog trunks (being oak trees that have been buried under the peat for perhaps a century, over which new peat has formed — when the peat is dug out these bog trunks come to light.)" He goes on to add "Here’s a little scratch from the peat fields." This is referring to a small sketch in the letter, Women Working in the Peat (F No Number Assigned, JH 410), which is displayed below.
Near the end of the same letter Vincent tells Theo, "I hope to make something of the women on the heath in the scratch overleaf, and shall go back to the same field." He went back and turned this sketch into the finished painting Two Women In The Moor.
To Theo van Gogh, circa 7 October 1883
ALSO KNOWN AS
Two Women Digging, and a Wheelbarrow
PROVENANCE
Mrs. J. van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam;
V. W. van Gogh, Laren;
Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
