3. It is not clear which reproduction Van Gogh used in making his copy after
The sower; the only early copy by his hand dates from April 1881, around eight months after this letter was written (
F 830 / JH 1 ). See cat. Amsterdam 1996, pp. 79-82, cat. no. 16. Of
Millet’s
The sower there exist paintings (including one in Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, and another in Kugawa, Yamanashi Prefectural Museum) and a pastel which Van Gogh could have seen at the
Emile Gavet sale in 1875 (cf.
letter 36, n. 5). In 1873,
Paul Edmé Lerat made an etching after the work – which corresponds to a lithograph dating from 1851. Van Gogh owned this etching, to which he applied a grid, but it is not known whether he already had it in August 1880 (Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, t*229).
Ill. 1888 . (Cf. also
letter 73, n. 5 and
letter 686, n. 6). See exhib. cat. Boston 1984, pp. 30-35, cat. nos. 18-19; exhib. cat. Amsterdam 1988, pp. 156-192, cat. nos. 64-80; exhib. cat. Paris 1998, pp. 90-105, cat. nos. 40-48.