Lost finds - Breda

After Vincent's departure from the Netherlands, contact with Breda continued through his mother, Anna Cornelia Carbentus. She went to live with Vincent's youngest sister Willemien and brother Cor at the corner of Nieuwe Ginnekenstraat and Van Coothplein, near here, in 1886.

In 1888, she moved to Nieuwe Haagdijk. She then had most of Vincent's Dutch oeuvre stored with a carpenter. As she never looked after it again, it was taken away by Breda's buyer Jan Couvreur in 1903 and sold on the market for a few cents. This collection is also known as ‘the chests of Breda’. Some of it has been recovered and recognised as the work of Vincent van Gogh. Much has disappeared, giving rise to myths and ever-new discoveries of ‘Lost Finds’.

In 1888, Vincent painted a portrait of his mother in Arles, after a black-and-white photograph he had of her. Vincent painted the colours according to memory.