He met Sien Hoornik, a local woman and occasional prostitute and set up house with her. His father and Mauve thought he was insane. He left Hague in 1883, for the Northern fernland of Drenthe. He still felt guilty about leaving Sien and her child, but he loved the landscape and worked very hard, despite his lack of materials and a studio. He spent a lot of time wandering around the countryside, making stetches of the landscape. He began to feel isolated and worried about his future. He wrote some 20 letters to his brother Theo in 11 weeks time. He rented an attic in a house but found it to be too melancholy and he became depressed. He became so depressed that he left for his parents" new home in Nuenen. Until now he had expressed in paintings with peasants and still life paintings, he particularly liked books. While in Nuenen, He became interested in bird's nests. He would pay the local boys to find nest, and bring them to his studio. The Bible he painted just before his leaving his father's home, six months after his father's death, came to be a great torment to him and a great deal to him. He had broken with Christianity, which proved to be a very painful experience to him. He made several studies of peasant hands and heads before he made the most important piece of work, The Potato Eaters, a scene he painted in 1885. He went to Antwerp in 1885, partly to escape gossip about being with a peasant girl. He enrolled in the Academy at Antwerp in 1886. He was eager to learn but he could not stop his rapidity and boldness of his own methods. He was put into the beginner's class, he probably never knew of this as he left for Paris in March 1886. He stayed with his brother Theo and worked in the studio of Fernand Cormon. He made many friends but most still considered him to be mentally unstable. After only a few months, he left the studio. He made became fascinated with impressionist although he never was really one.
