1884, in private hands

The record dates Two Rats to 1884, the middle year of the Nuenen period, and gives the location as a private collection. That is not a marginal category here: 118 of the 610 works in this catalogue are recorded in private hands, second only to the Van Gogh Museum's 135. A chronology built from museum records has a hundred-odd entries where the record ends at the word private, and this is one of them.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 29.1 by 41.3 centimetres, a small horizontal. The measured palette reads as brown, the reading returned for eighteen of the twenty-five works dated 1884.

Why a still life of animals fits the year

The Nuenen period in this catalogue is dominated by studies rather than by finished subjects: of the twenty-five works dated 1884, six are titled as still lifes and three name weavers. Small formats and modest subjects are what the year mostly consists of, and this entry is unremarkable in exactly that useful way. The record does not say when the work entered private hands, and no ownership history is offered here.