The painting was bought at auction in Groningen on 17 May 1993, but the auctioneer had refused to divulge the name of the previous owner, despite repeated requests.
The painting Two Diggers was most recently at the Van Gogh Museum from 7 October 2002 to 4 April 2003 for a thorough evaluation. The report from the Museum, dated 4 April 2003, mentioned that a Mr W.R. Frieling—from Beilen—had sold the painting at the auction in Groningen; this, for the very first time, gave the lead needed for further research on the provenance. After sending Mr. Frieling information about what had happened to the painting since he had sold it, he kindly invited me for a discussion. This took place at his house in Beilen on 15 December 2003. He told me that he had bought it on a flea market in Eelde, near Groningen, for very little money and not as a possible 'Van Gogh'. Shortly after the purchase he had discovered the vague signature 'Vincent' when cleaning the painting, and this started for him the idea of it being a 'possible'.
After some hesitation he told me that a Mr Jan van der Pluym had sold it to him in Eelde. Van der Pluym was a dealer in antique clocks and paintings living in Breda: Frieling gave me his telephone number.
When phoning van der Pluym the next day he confirmed having sold the painting to Frieling—he thought around 1988/1989. He himself had had it a number of years and also thought that he could perhaps still locate the man who had sold it to him. He enquired about the reason for my interest and I told him that I had bought it and was trying to learn as much as possible about the painting's provenance. I also told him that various experts had attributed it to Vincent van Gogh and that it was currently in the Breda's Museum in their "Vincent van Gogh; Lost and Found" exhibition.
Still on the phone, he then said that he knew the signature not to be genuine. When I asked how he knew that, he happily told me that he had placed it himself, and he explained exactly how he had done it. I thanked him for his voluntary information and we agreed to get together soonest.
Some had doubted the signature in the past. Especially Dr Cadorin in Basle who, in his report in 1996, declared that the dubious signature could unjustly give the painting the label of 'a fake' and he therefore suggested to treat it like damage needing restoration and make it invisible again the way it had been.
I realised that what van der Pluym had told me effectively solved the problems over the signature being dubious.
This news was almost too good to be true. The Van Gogh Museum also has never disputed that the painting is from the end of the 19th century. Therefore, if the signature has been placed around 1988—some hundred years after Two Diggers was painted—the person who signed it cannot be the same person who painted Two Diggers. Thus, the painting was therefore definitely not a fake by the artist of it. It is an early study. If painted by Vincent it would have been most likely not to have been signed. He usually did not bother to sign his studies.
After our discussion on the phone Van der Pluym went to see the painting in the BredaÕs Museum. He told a staff member there about his signature, he also spoke with the curator. The Breda's Museum therefore became anxious to launch an early press release. I advised the Van Gogh Museum. The news about the "signature affair" was subsequently widely reported, at home and abroad, in a variety of interpretations.
That same week I met van der Pluym at his home in Breda. He explained in detail why and how he had placed the signature. He repeated that he could possibly still put me in touch with the man who had sold him the painting and he would let me know as soon as possible. I asked van der Pluym to make, if at all possible, an appointment for a meeting with the gentleman he had bought it from.
A day later van der Pluym telephoned me with news about the man who had sold him the painting, who apparently still lived in the same place in Sprundel. His name was Adriaan Konings, a collector of mainly religious antiques and paintings. Mr. Konings also does part house clearances. Van der Pluym had already arranged for us to meet him at his house in Sprundel on Monday 22 December 2003.
Mr. Konings described how, in around 1981, he had found Two Diggers, amongst various other items and pictures whilst clearing an attic on the loft of the very large Villa Wilhelmina in Zundert. That Villa was then about to be demolished to make room for a housing project. A family called Van Ginneken had owned it, and had lived in it since it had been built for Pieter Van Ginneken in 1912.
Mr. Konings believed that one of the family members who had lived in that Villa, a son of Pieter, now in his eighties, was still alive and was now living nearby in Belgium. He would try to find out his address as soon as possible and let me know. The Festive Season might delay his enquiries a little.
Mr. Konings said that he had quite liked the painting but had never realised what it really might be. He had kept it for a number of years before selling it, in a bundle with other paintings, to van der Pluym.
He still now has in his possession two other pictures, as well as other sundry items, from the same loft clearance of the Van Ginneken's Villa Wilhelmina.
Thanks to the Van Gogh Museum, who provided me with the name W.R. Frieling; and thanks to Frieling who directed me to J. van der Pluym; who, in turn, introduced me to Adriaan Konings, I had now discovered the name of the family in whose imposing Villa Wilhelmina Two Diggers had surfaced around 1981.
The name Van Ginneken was not totally unfamiliar to me. I had read it before, also in connection with Van Gogh.
On 30 March 1853 Dr. Cornelis van Ginneken attended the birth of a baby in Zundert. The next day he accompanied his friend, the baby's father, Vicar Theodorus van Gogh, to register the birth of Vincent Willem van Gogh at the registry office in Zundert.
Vincent spent the first sixteen years of his short life, apart from some interruption, in Zundert, a three-hour walk south of Breda. His love for the area and the substantial influence of that time on his later life are repeatedly expressed in his letters. In the last of his thirty-seven year life he still writes about his memories of Zundert, of every room in their house, every plant in the garden, the countryside, the neighbours etc. (With 'the neighbours' he obviously referred to the Aunties, the Van Ginnekens, the Van Mens etc.). From 1860 he attended the local village school there, where Charles van Ginneken, son of Dr. Cornelis van Ginneken, was one of his school friends. Both their names appear on the same school fee list for April 1861.
There was regular contact between the families Van Gogh and Van Ginneken.
This contact continued after the Van Goghs left Zundert for Helvoirt in 1871 and also later when they moved to nearby Etten in 1875.
On 21 July 1878 for instance, Vincent, some 25 years old then, with his father, visited Charles van Ginneken in Zundert. In his letter of 22 July 1878 from Etten Vincent writes to Theo (144/123): "Yesterday Father had to preach in Zundert, and I went there with him. You have to be given many greetings from the Aunties. We also went to see Ch. Van Ginneken, who, as you may have heard already, is to marry Marie v. Mens and has bought the Ropsengarden to build a tannery there. "* (click here for note)
A year earlier he had also walked to Zundert from Etten to visit an old farmer on his deathbed, but unfortunately he had come too late. The man had already died. Even from The Hague he wrote a few times about his desire to visit Zundert. Later, when he lived in Nuenen he was also not all that far from there. He had walked much longer distances before.
Charles Van Ginneken married Marie van Mens and built the tannery, as he had told Vincent. Almost next to it, he created a beautiful villa, which was later named Villa Wilhelmina. It had a view to the Square. A second floor was built on this villa in 1901/1902. Charles lived there with his wife until they died in 1927/1928. They had five children. He had also started a commercial tree nursery in 1882, which, after becoming purveyors to the Crown also received the Royal Warrant in 1908 and was from then on called the Royal Tree Nursery Wilhelmina.
Charles became a Knight of the Order of Oranje-Nassau and also of the Order of Leopold II of Belgium. The Van Ginnekens visited Breda regularly, also in connection with nursery business and the purchase of pesticides etc. It is very likely that contact was made again between the Van Ginnekens and Mother Van Gogh when the latter came to live in Breda in 1886, and perhaps also with Theo when he was visiting his mother there.
Charles van Ginneken's son Pieter was born on 26 May 1889. Pieter married the wealthy brewer's daughter, Anna de Weert, from Sprundel (Brewery "De Vissenberg"), and had an imposing villa built in 1912, a hundred meters distant from the Villa Wilhelmina of his parents. Pieter and his wife Anna had three children.
When Benno Stokvis, in 1926, researched matters concerning 'Vincent van Gogh in Brabant', he also interviewed the nurseryman Charles van Ginneken in Zundert. Van Ginneken had told him that he was an old school friend of Vincent, whom he had described as a quiet boy, good, but of simple tastes. He had red hair and many freckles.
After the deaths of Charles and Marie van Ginneken, Villa Wilhelmina was let, from 1940 as Town Hall, when it lost it's name. In 1951 it was sold to the Boerenleenbank (a local bank) and in 1965 it was demolished and now the old Rabobank still stands on that same site.
In 1940, the nearby new villa built in 1912 by Pieter van Ginneken, formally took over the name: Villa Wilhelmina.
Pieter was a man of great standing in Zundert. Earlier, in 1925 he had taken over the management of the Royal Tree Nursery Wilhelmina, he was a town councillor in Zundert, president of the 'Harmonie Nut en Vermaak', president of the Skating Club (he also owned a skating rink), president of the 'Oranje-Comité', and he was founder of Zundert's annual dahlia pageant, the largest flower pageant in the world. He has also been caretaker mayor of Zundert. He died in 1950.
His sons Jaak and Karel had taken over the management of The Royal Tree Nursery Wilhelmina in 1945.
Pieter's wife Anna continued to live in Villa Wilhelmina, nearly until she died in 1981, in a care-home in Etten-Leur.
The only other occupants who ever lived in Villa Wilhelmina were the three children of Pieter and Anna van Ginneken.
The eldest, daughter Ria, lived there until she married. She then moved with her husband the architect Frans Brockx to a very eccentric bungalow they built in the large garden of Villa Wilhelmina. She and her husband died some time ago.
The second, a son named Jack or Jaak, lived in the villa until about 1979 when he moved, next to his sister in Wilhelminahof 3, in the garden of Villa Wilhelmina. He died in 1992 in Breda.
The third, son Karel Antoon, is now the only survivor of all those who ever lived in Villa Wilhelmina. He moved in 1968, when he married and first lived elsewhere in Zundert until the new house that he was having built on the old skating rink of his father, on the Meirse weg in Zundert, was completed. Around 1985, after a short spell in Roosendaal, he moved to Essen in Belgium with his wife where they still live now. The Villa Wilhelmina stood empty for a while before its demolition in 1982.
It was in a raised part, an attic, of the loft of Villa Wilhelmina where, when it was cleared before its demolition, Two Diggers, (with a few other paintings and sundry items) was found by Adriaan Konings, who had been asked to do the clearance by Jaak and Karel Antoon van Ginneken.
Mr. Karel Antoon van Ginneken, now in his eighties, declared:
"The loft of Villa Wilhelmina had an elevated area, an 'attic', not easily accessible, a special ladder was needed to get on to it; it had no windows and was very dark. As far as I know this raised part of the loft was used from the very beginning for the storage of all sorts of surplus household goods, including even small items of furniture. Not immediately useful items from a few inheritances my parents received, certainly from what they inherited from their own parents, Charles and Marie, in around 1928, were also stored there.
Before the villa was demolished in 1982 it had been arranged, about a year earlier, to have the loft cleared by Adriaan Konings from Sprundel. The house itself had already been cleared some time before that; the contents had been sold to someone else or had been taken elsewhere by family.
When Adriaan Konings cleared the attic he brought everything downstairs and laid these out in one of the empty rooms downstairs. There were a few pictures amongst them, they had been placed on the ground leaning against the wall. Both my brother and I inspected these goods with Konings, before the latter took them away.
When, a few weeks ago, I was sent a poster of Two Diggers I saw that it resembled one of those pictures. I phoned Mr. Jans and told him this when confirming receipt of the things he had sent me. After talking to Mr. Konings again later he told me that he still had two of the other pictures and a few of the other goods from that clearance of Villa Wilhelmina. He later showed me these two pictures, one of them I remembered particularly well as that had also hung in the house at one time. He told me which other items he also still had and I remember those as well. At the time of the clearance my brother and I had no idea of what kind of painting Two Diggers was. As far as I can remember it has not hung in the house. My parents were no art collectors and probably had it taken to the loft, together with other items out of what they received by inheritance from my grandparents.
It is more likely that a painting by Vincent van Gogh first came to the family through my grand parents, who knew him well, rather than to my parents. My grandparents may already not have attached special value to it. I do not know whether they ever hung it, I was about six when they died. May be it just moved from their loft to ours then."
Because of the acquaintanceship of more than twenty-five years, between Charles van Ginneken and Vincent van Gogh himself, it is indeed most likely that Two Diggers came to the Van Ginneken family through Charles van Ginneken and his wife.
The journey of Two Diggers from a Van Gogh to the Van Ginneken family probably commenced not very long after 1882, first to Charles van Ginneken. After Charles' death in 1928 it moved to the Villa Wilhelmina of his son Pieter van Ginneken next door, probably with a forgotten history. Pieter had it moved with various other items from his father's estate to the attic in the loft of his Villa where these items remained hidden and forgotten by the family living in the Villa, also after Pieter died in 1950. They remained hidden until found in 1981, during a loft clearance by Adriaan Konings, before demolition of that Villa.
Konings sold Two Diggers a few years later, with a.o. some other paintings to Jan van der Pluym of Breda. Some other items ex Charles van Ginneken, from the same loft clearance, remain with Konings till now.
Despite having been suggested later by an artist friend that the painting of Two Diggers he had bought, might be 'a Van Gogh' Van der Pluym was convinced this was not the case. At his friends suggestion however, he removed by dissolvent some surface paint to reveal the name Vincent, but after obliterating this false signature, he sold it as a painting by an unknown artist, to W.R. Frieling of Beilen, who sold it, after cleaning and with the then again very vaguely visible inscription, in 1993, at the auction house of J. van den Enden in Groningen to the present owner.
* The underlined sentence (click here) can only be found in the Van Crimpen/Berends-Albert edition of 1990. It was left out in the original edition of "Brieven aan zijn Broeder", by Jo. van Gogh-Bonger in 1914 and also in English and French editions of the "Letters of Vincent van Gogh". The rest of the letter can be found in all editions.