Van Gogh lodged at the home of Ursula Loyer and her daughter Eugenie,[1] at 87 Hackford Road, Stockwell, London, England, from August 1873,[2] while working at the art dealership Goupil & Co.[3] He sketched the 1824-built,[3] three-storey[3] Georgian terrace including the house, opposite Durand School,[4] using pencil with chalk highlights.

In 1973, while researching an article on van Gogh, the journalist Ken Wilkie visited Eugenie's granddaughter, Kathleen Maynard, at her home in Stoke Gabriel, Devon, England.

[3] Wilkie recognised it as depicting the house in Hackford Road, and being potentially Van Gogh's work.

I do not hesitate to accept the drawing shown to me as a work of Vincent van Gogh from his London period 1873–1874.Maynard lent the drawing to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, for its reopening in 1973, and it remained in their care for over three decades, during which time it was exhibited there, and at the Kröller-Müller Museum and at the Barbican Centre in London.

[3] Maynard died in 2000,[3] and in 2005 her daughter Anne Shaw requested its return; and so it remains in the possession of the original family.