[4][5] He studied for a time in the Netherlands but his zeal and self-imposed asceticism cost him a short-term position in lay ministry.

[6] In April 1881, Van Gogh moved to the Etten (North Brabant) countryside in the Netherlands with his parents where he continued drawing, often using neighbors as subjects.

[7] Although Van Gogh would have liked to marry Stricker, given her decisive refusal: "No, never, never" (niet, nooit, nimmer)[8] and his inability to support himself financially, marriage was out of the question.

That Christmas he quarreled violently with his father, to the point of refusing a gift of money, and left for The Hague.

Mauve introduced him to painting in both oil and watercolor and lent him money to set up a studio;[11] however, the two soon fell out, possibly over the issue of drawing from plaster casts.

[12] Mauve appears to have suddenly gone cold towards Van Gogh and did not return a number of his letters,[13] Van Gogh supposed that Mauve did not approve of his domestic arrangement with an alcoholic prostitute, Clasina Maria "Sien" Hoornik (1850–1904)[14] and her young daughter.

[19] Van Gogh's father put considerable pressure on his son to abandon Sien and her children.

[21] Van Gogh's art dealer uncle, Cornelis, commissioned 20 ink drawings of the city, which the artist completed by the end of May.

[27] When he committed to art as an adult, he began at an elementary level by copying the Cours de dessin, edited by Charles Bargue and published by Goupil & Cie.

In Spring 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus - owner of a renowned gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam - asked him for drawings of the Hague.

For more than a year he worked on single figures —highly elaborated studies in "Black and White",[28] which at the time gained him only criticism.

[29] The "peasant genre" related to the Realism movement that greatly influenced Van Gogh began in the 1840s with the works of Jean-François Millet, Jules Breton, and others.

He held laborers up to a high standard of how dedicatedly he should approach painting, "One must undertake with confidence, with a certain assurance that one is doing a reasonable thing, like the farmer who drives his plow... (one who) drags the harrow behind himself.

In this case, Van Gogh struggled with the strong wind which sent grains of sand into his thickly applied paint.

The painting may be reminiscent for Van Gogh of the times in his youth he fled to the Zundert Woods to escape from his family.

[37] In November 1882 Van Gogh began drawings of individuals to depict a range of character types from the working class, Worn Out was one of the series.

[39] Unlike the character studies Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in November 1882 that he had drawn a portrait of Jozef Blok (F993), a street bookseller who was sometimes called "Binnenhof's outdoor librarian".