Who is in Vincent van Gogh’s sketch of the church in Zweeloo? Historian Albert Metselaar thought he had found the answer last week, but now another name is popping up.
Van Gogh made the drawing on November 1, 1883 during his day trip to Zweeloo. In the foreground is an unknown shepherd with a flock of sheep. During an extensive research into shepherds, Metselaar came across someone who could be the shepherd in the sketch. It concerns Geert Stevens, who, according to the historian, was registered as a shepherd in Zweeloo at that time.
Metselaar immediately made a comment. “You can’t rule out that someone else will come up after all. You never know if there was another shepherd at that time,” he said last week. And that other shepherd has already surfaced. It concerns Harm Jansen, reports Fokko Kuipers of the Historical Association Zweeloo. “Through tradition it is known in Zweeloo that it was him, nicknamed Blue. He was a shepherd in Zweeloo.”
In 1990 there was an exhibition of Van Gogh in the church of Zweel. According to Kuipers, the original of the drawing by the world-famous painter of the church in Zweeloo was on display. The name of Harm Jansen was mentioned at the exhibition. “He came from Westerbork to Zweeloo in 1879. At his marriage in 1885 he is listed as a shepherd and he remained so for a long time. He is also listed as a shepherd in the population register,” says Kuipers. “Jansen first lived in De Wheem in Zweeloo, close to the church. He died in 1942.”
Metselaar includes the ‘new’ name in his research, which is not yet completed. “We are going to include this nicely. I will make sure there is a definitive answer, because several names are associated with this shepherd. But for me, Stevens is still at the top at the moment.”