Johanna van Gogh writes that Johannes "was at first a gold-wire drawer like his father, but he later became a Bible teacher and a clerk in the Cloister Church at The Hague."

[1] A family legacy, from his great-uncle—a sculptor and a lifelong bachelor—allowed Vincent van Gogh (the elder) to study divinity at the University of Leiden.

[3] Theodorus van Gogh was born 8 February 1822, one of eleven children and the only one of six brothers to become a pastor like his father.

Theodorus graduated from Utrecht in 1849 after successfully completing his theology program, which allowed him to secure a position as pastor in Groot-Zundert, a village in the North Brabant region of the Netherlands.

[4] Reverend Theodorus van Gogh was pastor of the Protestant Dutch Reformed Church, which adhered to Calvinist doctrine.

He placed Émile Zola's novel La Joie de vivre (English: The Joy of Living) in front of the Bible which to him likely symbolized worldliness.

[8] She enjoyed art and was artistically inclined, "filling notebooks with drawings of plants and flowers"[9] and studied painting with Hendrik van de Sande Bakhuyzen.

[11] In a letter to his sister he described the painting: "The younger of the two ladies who are out for a walk is wearing a Scottish shawl with green and orange checks, and a red parasol.

But a bunch of dahlias, some of them citron yellow, the others pink and white mixed, are like an explosion of color on the somber figure.

Finally, the interjacent plane, there is a maid-servant, dressed in blue, who is arranging a profusion of plants with white, pink, yellow and vermilion-red flowers."

Vincent enjoyed playing outdoors and made up games for his brothers and sisters, once rewarded with the most beautiful rose bush in the garden as his award.

He wrote to his brother, Theo, "I find Father and Mother's sermons and ideas about God, people, morality and virtue a lot of stuff and nonsense.

"[19] Theo van Gogh (art dealer) was born in Groot Zundert on 1 May 1857, four years after his brother Vincent.

[20] He was more tender, kind and delicately built but shared his older brother's reddish fair complexion and light blue eyes.

[20] The Van Gogh Museum attributes a painting generally considered a self-portrait to actually be a portrayal of his brother, Theo.

I should have greatly preferred him to call the boy after Father, of whom I have been thinking so much these days, instead of after me; but seeing it has now been done, I started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom, big branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky.

Van Gogh and Wil wrote to each other about literature and modern art in much the same way he did with his brother, Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin.

[11] Vincent made a drawing of his sister, "Portrait of Willemina Jacoba ('Willemien') van Gogh" (F849) in July 1881 with pencil and charcoal.

"[29] During the summer of 1889, honoring his sister Wil's request, Vincent made several smaller versions of Wheat Field with Cypresses.

Their initially warm relationship became strained; in April 1875, Anna wrote about Vincent's behaviour to Theo: "I believe that he has illusions about people and judges people before he knows them, and then when he finds out what they're really like and they don't live up to the opinion he formed of them prematurely, he's so disappointed that he throws them away like a bouquet of wilted flowers, without looking to see whether or not there are some among those wilted flowers which, when handled with care, are not quite rubbish yet.

Vincent attended the wedding, but relations with his sister remained cool; Anna complained about his aloofness and characterized him as a "wooden lion"[32] After their father's death in 1885 the two became estranged.

The youngest Van Gogh sibling, Cor, left the Netherlands for South Africa during the Second Boer War (1899-1902).

In Pretoria, he was employed to make technical drawings for the Netherlands-South African Railway Company (Nederlandsh-Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorweg Maatschappij).

[33] Anton Mauve was married to Vincent's cousin Ariëtte (Jet) Sophia Jeannette Carbentus[34] and was a major influence on the artist.

Mauve continued to encourage him and lent him money to rent and furnish a studio[35] but later grew cold towards him and did not return a number of letters.

[36] In a letter to his brother Theo dated 7 May 1882,[37] Vincent describes "a very regrettable conversation" in which Mauve told him their association was "over and done with" adding by way of explanation that Van Gogh had a vicious character.

Vincent continued his letter by expressing his sorrow and then defiantly launches into a defense of his relationship with Clasina (Sien) Maria Hoornik, a pregnant prostitute he had befriended.

X-rays of the painting indicate that Vincent later added church members and autumn leaves to the previously bare trees, which made the work more colorful.

The winter scene of bare-branched trees and gloomy sky hints of the preceding fall by a few remaining red leaves.

Vincent wrote to Theo: "The life and death of peasants remain forever the same, withering regularly, like the grass and flowers growing in that churchyard."