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Lot Essay
Inspired by great progress in his drawings and use of watercolour while living in The Hague in the first half of 1882, and given further impetus by a visit from Theo at the beginning of August, van Gogh turned his attention to painting in oils in August and thus embarked upon a period of vital development in his art. Theo had left Vincent with some money and in a letter of thanks after his brother's departure, Vincent wrote to him, 'I am so thankful that you have been here. I think it a delightful prospect to be able to work a whole year without anxiety, and a new horizon has been opened to me in painting through what you gave me... What we saw in Scheveningen together - sand, sea and sky - is something I certainly hope to express sometime' (The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, vol. I, London, 1958, no. 222).
Van Gogh's work from the summer of 1882 revolves largely around the coastline at Scheveningen, a fishing village near The Hague, as he attempted to master the traditional genre of seascape painting. The sand dunes around Scheveningen were also to prove a fascinating subject for the artist and Het Duin provides testament to van Gogh's preoccupation at this time with rich texture and earthy colours. In a letter of August 1882 that most probably refers to the present work, van Gogh wrote to Theo, 'Then I have painted a huge mass of dune ground - thickly painted and sticky' (op. cit., no. 225).
As he frequently pointed out to Theo in his letters, this was a time of great experiment for van Gogh and he applied himself with great vigour and self-criticism to oil painting. Of trying to depict his unique vision of nature, he wrote, 'Then I am still dissatisfied, because I still have that splendid scene too clearly in my mind to be satisfied with what I made of it. But I find in my work an echo of what struck me, after all. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand' (op. cit., no. 228). Despite his frustration however, van Gogh was pleasantly surprised at the highly personal nature of these works, these 'first things' as he called them, that display a far greater individuality and freedom than the still-lifes he painted under Anton Mauve's direction earlier in the year. With typical reticence, van Gogh wrote of them to Theo, 'but though I say so myself, they are not bad at all, and I repeat, it surprises me a little' (op. cit., no. 225).
Few of van Gogh's oils from his stay in The Hague in 1882 still exist; out of more than seventy that Vincent mentioned in a letter from Drenthe (no. 329) only around twenty-five remain, fourteen of which can be dated to August. Het Duin is a painting of great character and forceful vigour that stands on the cusp of van Gogh's break from tradition and that foreshadows his later development towards a masterful handling of texture and colour.
Van Gogh's work from the summer of 1882 revolves largely around the coastline at Scheveningen, a fishing village near The Hague, as he attempted to master the traditional genre of seascape painting. The sand dunes around Scheveningen were also to prove a fascinating subject for the artist and Het Duin provides testament to van Gogh's preoccupation at this time with rich texture and earthy colours. In a letter of August 1882 that most probably refers to the present work, van Gogh wrote to Theo, 'Then I have painted a huge mass of dune ground - thickly painted and sticky' (op. cit., no. 225).
As he frequently pointed out to Theo in his letters, this was a time of great experiment for van Gogh and he applied himself with great vigour and self-criticism to oil painting. Of trying to depict his unique vision of nature, he wrote, 'Then I am still dissatisfied, because I still have that splendid scene too clearly in my mind to be satisfied with what I made of it. But I find in my work an echo of what struck me, after all. I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me, and that I have put it down in shorthand' (op. cit., no. 228). Despite his frustration however, van Gogh was pleasantly surprised at the highly personal nature of these works, these 'first things' as he called them, that display a far greater individuality and freedom than the still-lifes he painted under Anton Mauve's direction earlier in the year. With typical reticence, van Gogh wrote of them to Theo, 'but though I say so myself, they are not bad at all, and I repeat, it surprises me a little' (op. cit., no. 225).
Few of van Gogh's oils from his stay in The Hague in 1882 still exist; out of more than seventy that Vincent mentioned in a letter from Drenthe (no. 329) only around twenty-five remain, fourteen of which can be dated to August. Het Duin is a painting of great character and forceful vigour that stands on the cusp of van Gogh's break from tradition and that foreshadows his later development towards a masterful handling of texture and colour.