The first Nuenen period, at small scale

The record dates Two Women in the Moor to 1883, the opening year of the five-part chronology this site uses. Only nine works here carry that date, so each one accounts for a large share of what the catalogue can say about the year at all.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 35.5 by 27 centimetres — small, and upright — and it is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The measured palette reads as yellow, which is the reading returned for seven of the nine works dated 1883. For a year sitting between the Dutch coast and the Brabant villages, that is a more crowded result than the usual account of the early work would predict, and it is worth saying that the measurement records which family dominates a surface, not how bright it is.

Where the year sits

1883 is the first year of Nuenen in this arrangement and the last in which titles still name The Hague and its dunes. The catalogue holds nine works from it and twenty-five from 1884, and the subjects narrow as the count grows: weavers, peasant heads, cottages. This entry belongs to the wider, thinner year. Beyond the date, the size, the collection and the measured palette, nothing further about it is claimed here.