tings here were crude but improving. Van Gogh's progress was interrupted by an intense love for his widowed cousin Kee Vos. On her decisive rejection of him he pursued her to Amsterdam, only to suffer more humiliation. Anton Mauve, a leading member of the Hague school was a cousin of van Gogh's mother. This opportunity to be taught by him encouraged van Gogh to settle in Den Hague with Theo's support. When van Gogh left Den Hague in September 1883 for the northern fenland of Drenth, he did so with mixed feelings. He spent hours wandering the countryside, making sketches of the landscape, but began to feel isolated and concerned about the future. He had rented a little attic in a house but found it melancholy, and was depressed with the quality of his equipment. "Everything is too miserable, too insufficient, too dilapidated." Physically and mentally unable to cope with these conditions any longer, he left for his parents' new home in Nuenen in December 1883. Van Gogh had a phase in which he loved to paint birds and bird's nests. This phase did not last long. It only lasted until his father's death six months later. "The Family Bible" which he painted just before leaving his house for good, six months after his father's death in 1885, must have meant a great deal to him. Van Gogh had broken with Christianity when he was fired from the missionary which proved to be the most painful experience of his life, and one from which he never quite recovered. At Nuenen, van Gogh gave active physical toil a remarkable reality. It's impact went far beyond what the realist Gustave Corbet had achieved and beyond even the quasi-religious images of Jean-Francois Millet. He made a number of studies of peasant hands and heads before embarking on what would be his most important work at Nuenen. The pinnacle of his work in Holland was The Potato Eaters, a scene painted in April 1885 that shows the working day to be over. It w...
