The work, created two years after Van Gogh had decided to become an artist, depicts 32-year-old pregnant woman Clasina Maria Hoornik, familiarly known as Sien.

Sorrow is widely acknowledged as a masterwork of draftsmanship,[citation needed] the culmination of a long and sometimes uncertain apprenticeship by Van Gogh in learning his craft.

[2] Previously, it was in the private collection of artist Sally Ryan, who had the work hung in her permanent suite at the Dorchester Hotel in London.

It is mentioned in a number of letters by Van Gogh, and he appears to have thought highly of it, considering it an important work and describing the drawing as "the best figure I've drawn".

Van Gogh is reported to have encountered Sien Hoornik wandering the streets of The Hague with her five-year-old daughter Maria Wilhelmina in January 1882.

[10] Van Gogh depicts Sien Hoornik as a woman scarred by life, and saw parallels to his own drawings of age-old trees ravaged by nature, such as The Roots in Sandy Ground (Les racines) 1882: "I wanted to express something of life's struggle, both in that white slender female figure and in those gnarled black roots with their knots.

"[11] The drawing is inscribed with the phrase "Comment se fait-il qu'il y ait sur la terre une femme seule, délaissée?

[12] The phrase provides a key to the themes of some of Van Gogh's early works, and his belief in poverty being the root cause of things such as prostitution.