Borinage · December 1878 -end of 1880 · birth of a vocation
Van Gogh in the Borinage : the preacher who becomes a designer
Before Arles, the Sunflowers and pure color, there is the black Belgium of the coal mines. Van Gogh arrives there to evangelize the miners; he leaves determined to learn drawing with the same fervor.
The short answer
Why is Borinage decisive for Van Gogh?
Borinage is not just an unfortunate stop before painting. It is the place where Vincent van Gogh, aged twenty-five, confronts his religious vocation with an extreme social reality: underground work, accidents, cold, poor housing and slag heaps which close the horizon.
Sent as a lay evangelist to Wasmes at the beginning of 1879, he pushed the ideal of Christian poverty to the point of almost materially sharing the condition of minors. His mandate is not renewed. After months of crisis, isolation and silence with Theo, he took up the pencil again in Cuesmes in 1880.
The transformation is neither sudden nor magical. Van Gogh already drew and looked at industrial landscapes in 1879. But, in the summer of 1880, drawing ceased to be a peripheral activity: it became methodical learning, then a vocation. Miners, low houses and curved silhouettes gave this vocation its first human horizon.
Two years that change a life
From sermon to pencil, step by step
The dates help avoid the overly simple story of the "rejected preacher who became an artist overnight". The decision was built over almost two years.
Arrive in the black country
Van Gogh discovered the Borinage, its workers' villages, its chimneys, its slag heaps and the almost total absence of artistic resources.
A mission to Wasmes
He received a six-month appointment as a lay evangelist. He visits families, reads the Bible and accompanies the sick and injured.
Get off at Marcasse
After an initial descent to 635 meters, it reaches around 700 meters at the Marcasse coal mine and describes the underworld to Theo.
Mandate stops
His official position is not renewed. His preaching considered difficult and his extreme asceticism do not correspond to the expectations of those responsible.
Find Theo
From Cuesmes, after a long silence, he resumed correspondence and exposed his distress, but also the possibility of artistic work.
Learn to draw
He copies Millet, works from the Bargue course and says he wants to master pencil, charcoal and brush. In the fall, he left to train in Brussels.
The key work of Borinage
How does Van Gogh already look as an artist?
A landscape without easy picturesqueness
Neither monument nor happy horizon. The subject is a territory of production: chimneys, buildings, embankments and smoke.
The sky as dominant matter
The large light area is not empty. Gray, brown and bluish washes make you feel a charged air, crossed by industrial emissions.
Horizontals that enclose
The road, houses and slag heaps pile into strips. The eye remains close to the ground, as if caught in mining geography.
A color still retained
Watercolor is discreet, earthy. It serves the structure and atmosphere rather than a self-contained shine.
Pay attention to modest places
Van Gogh does not separate aesthetics and compassion. Looking at a working-class home is already becoming a way of taking sides.
A beginning, not a mastery
The sheet remains hesitant. His interest lies precisely in this research: framing a world that he does not yet know how to fully represent.
Approach the sheet
Four details to read the industrial landscape
These cropping shows how a few washes and lines are enough to build a territory. The entire view remains essential to understanding the scale of the sky and horizontal confinement.
Fumes dilute the plant
The plumes are not drawn as firm contours: they contaminate the sky.
The slag heap becomes a mountain
Industrial waste creates the relief and replaces the natural hill.
Houses at the foot of the system
Small and tight, they place daily life in the shadow of production.
A road that does not deliver
The foreground opens a strip of passage, but the gaze immediately returns to the slag heaps.
Letter 151 · April 1879
Marcasse: see the mine from the inside
Van Gogh doesn't just observe the facilities from the road. He asks to go down. In letter 151 to Theo, he recounts a visit of about six hours to the Marcasse mine, one of the oldest and most dangerous in the region.
It evokes a depth of around 700 meters, the narrow galleries, the emaciated workers, the children who carry the coal and the almost total darkness. This experience does not make him a miner: it does, however, give him a bodily knowledge of the world he wants to serve and soon represent.
approximate duration of the visit told to Theo.
depth indicated for this second descent.
Van Gogh writes that he would like to make a sketch of this underworld.
He describes from his position as a visitor; the testimony of minors remains irreplaceable.
A failing religious vocation
Why isn't his mission renewed?
Biographies have sometimes reduced the episode to a heroic formula: Van Gogh was allegedly fired only because he gave everything to the poor. The reality is more complex.
The Borinage paradox
He wants to abolish the distance between the one who preaches and those who suffer. The institution also asks him to be clear, stable and efficient.Editorial summary based on letters and archives presented by VisitMons.
A difficult word
His speech and sermons are considered insufficient by those responsible for the mission.
Extreme asceticism
He gives goods, neglects his appearance and seeks almost absolute poverty, conduct which his supervisors find excessive.
A provisional mandate
The appointment was limited to six months. In the summer of 1879, the committee simply chose not to extend it.
A longer crisis
Van Gogh continued to preach without status for some time, then went through months of isolation. Art does not immediately appear as a solution.
The move to drawing does not erase religion
Van Gogh does not deny his desire for consolation overnight. He gradually shifts his language. Modest lives, manual labor, Millet's sower, old men and peasants will remain almost spiritual subjects. Drawing becomes another way of being close to the world, less based on sermons than on attention.
This continuity explains why Borinage announces the years of Nuenen more directly and Potato Eaters than the dazzling palette of Arles.
A corpus almost disappeared
Three images preserved to understand the turning point
Van Gogh wrote in September 1880 that much of his Borinage essays had been destroyed. The surviving leaves therefore do not form a complete inventory, but rare witnesses.
Coke factory in Borinage
Pencil and watercolor. An industrial landscape seen as an atmospheric and social totality.
Miners in the snow at dawn
The figures advance bent in the cold. The drawing preserves the memory of workers and children going to work before daylight.
The Magrot House
Charcoal on graphite. The house becomes a dark and angular mass, closer to an organism than to an architectural survey.
Walking as rhythm
The bodies are not individualized by the face: posture, spacing and direction are enough to tell of fatigue.
Cuesmes · summer 1880
How does he learn to draw without school?
The artistic choice becomes credible because it transforms into a work program. Van Gogh does not just "express" his suffering: he looks for models, repeats and measures his faults.
Copy the field work
He asks Theo for engravings after Jean-François Millet and copies them Field work as well as the Four moments of the day. The gestures of the sower and the digger give it grammar.
Leaves after Bargue
In letter 157, he says he completed sixty charcoal exercises based on Charles Bargue's drawing class. Repetition corrects the eye and hand.
Master before styling
He wants to make pencil, charcoal and brush "obedient". This technical ambition contradicts the myth of a purely spontaneous genius.
Return to houses and bodies
The copies are used to better look at the silhouettes of the Borinage. Academic learning does not replace the field: it allows you to face it.
Letter 158 · September 24, 1880
In extreme poverty, Van Gogh explains that he has regained energy and picked up his pencil. He feels that his hand obeys him more.Faithful paraphrase of the letter to Theo. He says he wants to seriously learn drawing.
The Borinage Today
Three real photographs to find the route
The landscape has changed, the sites have been restored or reconverted, but several places still allow you to follow the geography of Van Gogh between Wasmes, Marcasse and Cuesmes.
Van Gogh House in Cuesmes
At 3, rue du Pavillon, this small house museum recalls the moment when Vincent rented a room and organized his first drawing exercises. Photo: JoJan, CC BY 3.0.
Inside: the scale of a room
The place makes sensitive the modesty of the space from which Van Gogh copies Millet and Bargue. Photo: JoJan, CC BY 3.0.
Wasmes: the preacher's territory
The "Baby House", marked with a plaque, belongs to the local network of places associated with its mission and the memory of the stay.
Before a visit, check the hours of Maison Van Gogh and the conditions of access to the mining sites with VisitMons: openings may vary depending on the season and the work.
What Borinage leaves in the work
Four lasting legacies
The Belgian period does not determine all of Van Gogh. However, it set requirements that lasted until 1890, even when the color and touch changed radically.
The dignity of manual labor
Miner, sower, digger, weaver and peasant become major figures, not simple accessories of the landscape.
The curved body
Fatigue can be read in the posture before reading in the face. This visual syntax culminates in Nuenen's peasant studies.
The house as a portrait
Masures, cabins and village houses receive an almost human presence. The walls seem to preserve the lives they shelter.
Art as active consolation
The drawing replaces the sermon, but retains a moral goal: to look intensely, to make visible and to create a form of fraternity.
Continue with the store
Collections linked to Borinage
The store does not currently offer direct reproductions of Flénu's rare watercolor. These sets make it possible to follow themes born or consolidated in the mining country.
Vincent van Gogh
Portraits, landscapes, flowers, nights and rural scenes.
Work and figuresPeasants of Van Gogh
Curved bodies, earth and daily gestures.
1883 - 1885Van Gogh in Nuenen
The period which most directly extends the lessons of Borinage.
LearningVan Gogh after Millet
Sowers, fieldwork and transformed copies.
Inhabited architectureVan Gogh Houses
Cabins, facades and places that have become portraits.
Essential selectionPopular 100 Van Goghs
From black country to the colors of Arles and Saint-Rémy.
To extend
Articles to read next
The letters, houses and drawings make it possible to follow the transformation begun in Cuesmes even in the large paintings of Nuenen and Arles.
Vincent's letters to Theo
What they really reveal about his method, his doubts and his decisions.
GeographyVan Gogh's houses
All his addresses, from Zundert to Auberge Ravoux.
CatalogHow many works did he create?
Paintings, drawings, prints and counting limits.
NuenenPotato Eaters
The great outcome of his view of peasant life.
DrawingSorrow and Sien Hoornik
How drawing becomes a human language in its own right in The Hague.
LearningSkull with lit cigar
Dark humor, anatomy and training in Antwerp.
Frequently asked questions
Understand everything about Van Gogh in Borinage
When did Van Gogh live in Borinage?
He arrived in the region in December 1878 and remained there until the end of 1880. He stayed mainly in Wasmes, Petit-Wasmes and Cuesmes, before leaving for Brussels to continue his artistic training.
Why did Van Gogh go to Borinage?
He wants to become a preacher to the workers. After unfinished religious training, he obtained a temporary position as a lay evangelist in Wasmes for a period of six months.
Did Van Gogh really work in the mine?
No, he was not a minor. However, he went down to coal mines, including Marcasse, in order to understand the working conditions. In a letter, he recounts a six-hour visit at a depth of approximately 700 meters.
Why hasn't his preacher position been renewed?
Several factors combine: speech and preaching difficulties, ascetic behavior considered excessive, and mismatch between his radical conception of poverty and the committee's expectations. The episode should not be reduced to the mere fact of having donated one's clothes.
Was it in Borinage that he decided to become an artist?
Yes, but gradually. He already drew in 1879. After a long crisis, he methodically took up the pencil again in Cuesmes during the summer of 1880, copied Millet and Bargue, then claimed to want to seriously learn the profession of artist.
Which works from Borinage are still preserved?
The corpus is very small. We count in particular Coke factory in Flénu, sketches of minors in letters and The Magrot House. Van Gogh writes that many tests were destroyed.
Where is the Coke Factory in Flénu?
The 1879 sheet, executed in pencil and watercolor, belongs to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
What does Van Gogh copy to learn drawing?
He works from engravings by Jean-François Millet, notably the Field work, and performs dozens of exercises based on Charles Bargue's drawing class.
Can we visit the Van Gogh House in Cuesmes?
Yes. Maison Van Gogh is located at 3, rue du Pavillon in Cuesmes, near Mons. Opening days and times may change: consult VisitMons before traveling.
Can we visit the Marcasse coal mine?
The site still exists and is subject to heritage enhancements, but access depends on openings, events and security measures. Check local information before visiting.
What link exists between Borinage and Les Mangeurs de Potatoes?
The painting was painted in Nuenen in 1885, several years later. The link is therefore not geographical, but moral and visual: even pay attention to workers, tired bodies, modest interiors and earth tones.
Does Borinage explain all of Van Gogh's work?
No. Paris, Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers profoundly transform its color and touch. Borinage, however, remains the moment when artistic work becomes a lasting vocation and where one's interest in ordinary lives is fixed.
Verifiable sources
Return to letters and works
The story distinguishes between documented facts, careful interpretations and biographical legend. The long quotes have been paraphrased to stay as close as possible to their meaning.
Marcasse, April 1879
The descent into the mine, the galleries, the workers and the desire to draw.
Letter 155Cuesmes, June 1880
The resumption of dialogue with Theo and the room on rue du Pavillon.
Letter 156August 20, 1880
Copies after Millet and the graphic work program.
Letter 157September 7, 1880
Sixty exercises after Bargue and the loss of many ancient leaves.
Letter 158September 24, 1880
Resumption of pencil and the desire to master drawing tools.
VisitMonsBirth of an artist
Local chronology, Wasmes, Cuesmes, Van Gogh House and heritage trail.
National Gallery of ArtThe Magrot House
Instructions, technique, dimensions, origin and open image of the sheet.
Wikimedia CommonsCoke factory in Flénu
Image of the work and license information of the photographic reproduction.
Real photographsVan Gogh House
Exterior and interior views by JoJan, CC BY 3.0 license.
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