Meadows near Rijswijk and the Schenkweg is a watercolor by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh that he made in January 1882, shortly after taking up residence in The Hague.

Although he had been drawing for many years and occasionally applied watercolor washes, he did not take up painting proper until his study visit to his cousin-in-law and mentor Anton Mauve at The Hague in December 1881.

At the end of August 1881, van Gogh visited his cousin-in-law Anton Mauve, a noted and successful painter and a leading member of the Hague School, and showed him some studies and drawings he had made.

[Letters 2] At the end of the following November, van Gogh returned to the Hague for a month to take painting lessons from Mauve, during which time he saw him almost daily.

This, in turn, was a consequence of his bitterness over his spurned love for his widowed cousin Kee Vos Stricker that had led to so much family tension that year.

Arnold Pomerans remarked that it was the beginning of a long series of plainly furnished rooms, of which the Bedroom in Arles would eventually become a world-famous symbol.

His obsessive insistence on drawing from models brought him into conflict with both Mauve and his influential patron Hermanus Tersteeg, head of The Hague's branch of Goupil he had once worked for.

[13][Letters 17] Later that year, in July, in anticipation of marrying Sien, as well as wanting a bigger studio so that he could position himself further away from his models, he moved into more spacious accommodation next door at a rent of 12.50 guilders a month.

Writing about Roofs Seen from the Artist's Attic Window (below), he wrote:[Letters 23]"So you must imagine me sitting at my attic window as early as 4 o’clock, studying the meadows and the carpenter's yard with my perspective frame — as the fires are lit in the court to make coffee, and the first worker ambles into the yard.Over the red tiled roofs comes a flock of white pigeons flying between the black smoking chimneys.

Naifeh and Smith suggest that windows played an important role in van Gogh's life, as a way of gazing at the world without distraction, unobserved.

In that letter, van Gogh said he wanted to express something of life's struggle, as also in a larger version (now lost) of Sorrow, his iconic nude study of Sien completed at the same time.

Sorrow is cited by Jan Hulsker as an example of the technical proficiency van Gogh had attained in the six months since his first clumsy attempts at figure drawing in Etten the year before, and the same degree of mastery is evident in Tree Roots.

In the foreground the cinder road with the poplars that are starting to lose their leaves — then the ditch or canal full of duckweed, with a high bank with withered grass and bulrushes growing on it, then the grey or brown-grey earth of dug-over potato fields or patches planted with greenish purple red cabbage — here and there a really very fresh green of autumn weeds newly shot up, and above them beanpoles with wilting stalks and the reddish or green beanpods — beyond this strip of land the red rusted and black rails in yellow sand — here and there piles of old wood — mountains of coal, disused wagons — above them on the right several roofs and the goods depot — to the left a view of extensive, damp green meadows, cut off at the horizon far away by a grey band in which trees, red roofs and black factory chimneys can be made out.

Over it a slightly yellow but still grey sky, very chilly and wintery, which hangs down low and from which a sort of drizzle comes in waves and in which many hungry crows fly.

[24] Family tradition had it that Enthoven supported van Gogh financially at The Hague and later received an 'endless stream of laments, ... all of them accompanied by small sketches and scratches' from Nuenen and Antwerp.

In October 1882, Van Gogh made a watercolor of a group of people queuing in front of the lottery (right) as part of his plan to produce a 'saleable' work before the end of the year.

Of course, viewed superficially, a crowd of folk who evidently attach so much importance to "Today's draw" is something that almost makes you and me laugh, because we’re not in the least bit interested in the lottery.But the group of people — and their waiting expression — struck me, and it took on a larger, deeper meaning for me while I was working on it than in the first moment.

He is the figure in a top hat to the right in the letter sketch for State Lottery (above left), and appears in profile, recognisable by his trademark whiskers, in the watercolor itself.

In his student days he associated with painters of the Hague School such as Jozef Israëls, Jacob Maris and Anton Mauve, and he was a member of the Pulchri Society.

At that time van Gogh gave Theo a less than flattering account of Breitner's paintings as resembling mouldy wallpaper, although he did say he thought he would be all right in the end.

[36][37] In a letter to Theo of 11 September 1882, van Gogh recounted how a fellow suddenly spat a wad of tobacco onto his drawing while sketching at the potato market.

[Letters 47] Regarding Sien's situation, it is noteworthy that in those days for a woman to be abandoned by her husband was considered grounds for withholding charity, as she was supposed to have necessarily brought her downfall on herself.

[40][Letters 49] According to van Gogh himself, the inspiration for the strong contour line was a woodcut after Millet, La grande bergère assise (left).

Van Gogh frequently referred to them in his letters, and he had obtained a complete set of back numbers of The Graphic between 1870 and 1880, decorating his studio with his favourite prints.

Part of the reason was undoubtedly the expense of painting in oils, but Naifeh and Smith suggest the real reason was that at that time his heart lay in drawing: in his moving letter of 16 May 1882, describing his final humiliation from the family of Kee Vos and how he had come to meet Sien and his relationship with her, he wrote:[Letters 19]"I want to go through the domestic joys and sorrows myself so that I can draw them from experience.

I think you know very well that I’ve hacked my way through and am obviously ever more keen to do battle.Coming back to that little sketch – it was made in the Geest district in the drizzle, standing in a street in the mud, in all that bustle and noise, and I’m sending it to show you that my sketchbook proves that I try to capture things first-hand.

After going to the trouble and expense of installing shutters in his windows to adjust the light and to recreate the scene itself in his studio, van Gogh was able to study his models at leisure.

[Letters 56] Van Gogh abandoned his initial efforts at oil painting (left) in January 1882 because he did not feel confident enough in his drawing technique.

I sit with a white board before the spot that strikes me — I look at what's before my eyes — I say to myself, this white board must become something — I come back, dissatisfied — I put it aside, and after I’ve rested a little, feeling a kind of fear, I take a look at it — then I’m still dissatisfied — because I have that marvellous nature too much in mind for me to be satisfied — but still, I see in my work an echo of what struck me, I see that nature has told me something, has spoken to me and that I’ve written it down in shorthand.

In my shorthand there may be words that are indecipherable — errors or gaps — yet something remains of what the wood or the beach or the figure said — and it isn’t a tame or conventional language which doesn’t stem from nature itself but from a studied manner or a system."