Etten-Leur: Vincent felt that his parents didn’t understand him – a familiar phenomenon which knows no time. His modern ideas brought him into conflict with his father. By the end of 1881 the tension in the parsonage was so acute that Vincent was asked to leave home. The direct result was that Vincent informed his father that he did not want anything more to do with his belief and refused to go to church at Christmas. He left in a fury for The Hague where a couple of weeks earlier he had taken a painting course with the famous Hague artist Anton Mauve, a cousin by marriage of Vincent’s mother.
