• 21 Aug, 2019

• By, Wikipedia

File:Old Man With His Head In His Hands (At Eternity's Gate).jpg

Date 1882 Medium Transfer lithography, printed in black ink, crayon, brush and autographic ink (source VGM letter 288 n.13). Dimensions Printed surface height: 55.5 cm (21.8 in); width: 36.5 cm (14.3 in) Collection Various collections. This example (? source David Brooks vggallery.com)
Object history

• I Mrs. J. van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam: V.W. van Gogh, Laren: Van Gogh Museum inv F 1662/I
• II Mrs. J. van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam: V.W. van Gogh, Laren: Van Gogh Museum inv F 1662/II
• III Ph. de Kanter, Delft: Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (?)
• IV J. Hidde Nijland, The Hague: Sale The Hague (Pulchri) 5-6 October 1937, nr 49: Present owner ?
• V Arlesheim, Arthur Stoll [cat Sammlung Stoll, Zurich/Stutgaart 1961, nr 73
• VI Vincent van Gogh, [Amsterdam], Sale Amsterdam [de Vries] 5-6 November 1912, nr 451,Houthakker Art Gallery, Amsterdam
• VII Sale Paris [Drouot] 31 March 1920 nr 71: Le vieil ourvrier pleaurant [Old Laborer Crying]. Lithographie. Fort rare. Present owner ?

Exhibition history

• I or II 1905, Amsterdam, 247: 1954-5 Bern, 171
• V 1947, Basle, 123

Notes

Catalogues raisonnés:

• F1662: Faille, Jacob Baart de la (1970) [1928] The Works of Vincent van Gogh. His Paintings and Drawings, Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff, no. 1662 .
• JH268 : Jan Hulsker (1980), The Complete Van Gogh, Oxford: Phaidon, no.  268.
  
• There are seven known impressions. David Brooks' page at vggallery.com gives details and current locations of all seven. Neither Hulsker nor de la Faille make it clear which are inscribed At Eternity's Gate. The example in the Van Gogh Museum illustrated in VGM letter 288 n.13 does not have the inscription. David Brooks seems to imply just the one presently in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art has the inscription.
• The title Old Man with his Head in his Hands ("At Eternity's Gate") is Hulsker's. De la Faille gives Worn Out: At Eternity's Gate and notes his fort rare impression 7 was offered for sale in 1920 as Le vieil ouvrier pleurant (Old Laborer Crying).
• Compare drawings F863, F997, F998 and the late c. May 1890 painting, a faithful color study, F702, Old Man with His Head in his Hands (Hulsker's title: also Worn Out (De La Faille) and Sorrowing Old Man (Kröller-Müller Museum, it's present location since 1970), all subtitled At Eternity's Gate).
• The model was Adrianus Jacobus Zuyderland (Vincent's "Orphan Man"), a pensioner who posed for dozens of sketches at this time. See letter to Anthon van Rappard. The Hague, on or about Tuesday, 19 September 1882. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Van Gogh Museum. "Lately I’ve quite often had a man from the Old Men’s Home to pose"
• Letters
• Letter 287 To Anthon van Rappard. The Hague, Friday, 24 November 1882. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Van Gogh Museum. "You remember that drawing Worn Out [F863]? In the last few days I’ve done it again no fewer than three times with two models, and will labour on it some more. For the present I have one that will be the subject of a fifth stone, which thus depicts an old working man who sits and ponders with his elbows on his knees and his head (a bald crown this time) in his hands. I’m telling you this and that about the lithographs to show that I’m very enthusiastic about them ..."
• Letter 288 To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Sunday, 26 and Monday, 27 November 1882. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Van Gogh Museum. "That was as far as I got yesterday evening — this morning I had to go to the printer’s with my old man. Now I’ve followed everything: the transfer to the stone, the preparation of the stone, the actual printing. And I have a better understanding of what I can change by retouching. Herewith the first impression, not counting one that went wrong.
  I hope to do it better in time. I myself am very far from satisfied with this but, well, getting better must come through doing it and through trying. It seems to me that a painter has a duty to try to put an idea into his work. I was trying to say this in this print — but I can’t say it as beautifully, as strikingly as reality, of which this is only a dim reflection seen in a dark mirror — that it seems to me that one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the existence of ‘something on high’ in which Millet believed, namely in the existence of a God and an eternity, is the unutterably moving quality that there can be in the expression of an old man like that, without his being aware of it perhaps, as he sits so quietly in the corner of his hearth. At the same time something precious, something noble, that can’t be meant for the worms.
  ...
  This is far from all theology — simply the fact that the poorest woodcutter, heath farmer or miner can have moments of emotion and mood that give him a sense of an eternal home that he is close to."
• 294 To Theo van Gogh. The Hague, between about Wednesday, 13 and about Monday, 18 December 1882. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Van Gogh Museum. "I now have two more drawings — one is a man reading the Bible [F1001] and the other is a man saying his prayers before his midday meal [F1002], which is on the table. Both are most decidedly in what one might call an old-fashioned sentiment, they are ditto figures as the old man with his head in his hands."

References

• Naifeh, Steven and Smith, Gregory White. Van Gogh: the Life, New York: Random House, 2011. ISBN 978-0-375-50748-9, pp. 318-20 ff.

Source/Photographer www.vggallery.com Permission
(Reusing this file)

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