AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS.-With the joint purchase of an early drawing by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) the Kröller-Müller Museum and the Van Gogh Museum have made a remarkable addition to their respective collections. The drawing was made in 1880/81 by Van Gogh at the start of his career as an artist in Belgium. Few works by the artist from this period in Belgium have survived. The drawing, entitled The daughter of Jacob Meyer (after Bargue after Holbein), is a copy of a work by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98-1543), actually based on a reproduction of this work in a loose-leaf volume on drawing, Cours de dessin, by Charles Bargue (1826/27-1883). The purchase was financed by the BankGiro Lottery.

Copying is a tried and trusted method when learning art. When Van Gogh resolved to become an artist, in August 1880, he began by copying prints after works by Jean-François Millet (1814-1875). A befriended art dealer lent him a drawing course, Exercices au fusain, as well as the two-part Cours de dessin by Charles Bargue. The latter comprised 70 examples of drawings from plaster models and 67 reproductions after various masterpieces from art history. These included no less than 28 works by Holbein. Van Gogh copied these several times within the space of a year, amounting to hundreds of copies but only three of these survived. Two of these are versions of The daughter of Jacob Meyer.

This new acquisition is the earliest version and was probably made between September 1880 and April 1881. By the time Van Gogh moved from the Borinage to Brussels in early October 1881, he had already copied most of the examples in Bargue's art course at least once, including The daughter of Jacob Meyer. Because he subsequently copied them a second time in Brussels, the dating has been kept wide. He made his last copies from Bargue in the summer of 1881, while staying at Etten in Brabant. It is from this period that the second known version of The daughter of Jacob Meyer, currently in the Kröller-Müller Museum collection, dates.

The newly acquired sheet is drawn entirely in pencil and closely follows the picture in the drawing course, even in format. The only difference is the girl's hair, which is wilder, while the figure is slightly stockier than in Holbein's original. The later copy of The daughter of Jacob Meyer differs both from the original and from the new acquisition. It is a pen-and-ink drawing over a rudimentary pencil sketch. In this later version the girl's face has a more rustic expression.

With around 500 sheets, the Van Gogh Museum has the world's largest collection of drawings by the artist. The Kröller-Müller Museum also houses a major collection with around 180 drawings. This drawing is an important acquisition for the Van Gogh Museum because until now the museum did not possess any copies from Bargue from Van Gogh's early period. For the Kröller-Müller Museum the drawing is of importance precisely because it possesses the second known copy of The daughter of Jacob Meyer. Since only a few examples of Van Gogh's earliest work have survived, the new acquisition also represents a major addition to the nation's art collection. This joint acquisition is a unique project for both museums, which have drawn up a mutual agreement regarding the care of the drawing.

The new acquisition comes from a private collector who wishes to remain anonymous, and was purchased through the Annet Gelink Gallery, an Amsterdam art dealer.

The drawing can be seen from today until 18 September 2005 in the exhibition Van Gogh draughtsman, beside the later version on loan from the Kröller-Müller Museum and the reproduction after Holbein in Cours de dessin by Charles Bargue from which the drawings were copied. These will subsequently be presented from 10 to 24 October 2005 at the Kröller-Müller Museum.