Sorrow

Catalogue numbers: F 929a, JH 130.

At the beginning of 1882, van Gogh got to know a drunken woman who had spent her life in a state of moral and physical misery. He brought her and her children to live in his house and used her as a model. She drank and smoked cigars while he had to go hungry. In the present sketch, called Sorrow, we see her crouching hopelessly on the ground, with withered breasts. This situation lasted eighteen months.