Laima writes:

I believe I have an answer to Iman's question"Who is Van Gogh's friend in the other picture?"

Jan Hulsker in a book "Vincent & Theo Van Gogh:A Dual Biography" writes that "among the pictures Vincent had done in his studio at the time there was only one portrait of a woman, and the composition of that piece, the position of the head and the general impression of it correspond exactly with the sketch in the letter to Theo: it was the picture of his mother, mentioned in a letter of a week earlier (JH1600). He wrote that he was painting it after a photograph, because he was bored by the black-and-white of the photographic portrait (letter 546).

For a true understanding of Vincent's personality it is interesting to know that he had hung the portrait of his mother over his bed, but also that, for a reason which can only be guessed at, he preferred to replace it by a landscape in the finished painting."

I hope this will help to answer a three year old girl's question.

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