1882, the year before Nuenen

The record dates View of the Sea at Scheveningen to 1882. This site divides the painted years into five places, and the first of them, Nuenen, opens in 1883; 1882 belongs to the Dutch work that comes before. Thirteen works in this catalogue carry that date, which makes it one of the thinnest years in the arc — against 135 for 1888.

A place named three times, all in one year

Scheveningen is a coastal village beside The Hague. Three titles here name it, and all three are dated 1882: this view of the sea, Beach at Scheveningen in Calm Weather and Shores of Scheveningen. A motif that occupies one year and never returns is the most useful kind of entry a chronological catalogue can hold, because it dates itself without help.

What the record gives

The work is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds 135 of the 610 works here, more than any other collection. No dimensions are recorded. The measured palette reads as ochre. Ochre dominates three of the thirteen works dated 1882 and none at all dated 1883 or 1884, then returns from 1885 onward and becomes ordinary in the later years. The record shows the interruption; it does not explain it, and neither does this page.