Nuenen, 1885

The record dates Still Life with Bible to 1885, the closing year of the Nuenen period. Still life is a minor strand in the Dutch part of this catalogue and becomes a major one later: the record shows still lifes multiplying through Paris and dominating stretches of the Arles and Saint-Rémy years, from sunflowers to shoes to books.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 78 x 65 cm and is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The measured palette resolves to ochre — a warm, low-key dominant family typical of the year, in which brown and ochre together account for well over half the works catalogued here.

What a Bible is doing in a still life

An open Bible in a still life is one of the oldest and most stable conventions in Netherlandish painting: the book is a fixed sign, read as scripture, authority and mortality long before van Gogh picked it up. That much is a public convention rather than an interpretation of this particular canvas. What the record establishes is narrower and firmer — that the painter, in the Netherlands, in the last year before Paris, made a large still life whose named subject is the Bible. Any account of what he meant by it lies outside what this catalogue can support.