The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam has bought the watercolour Pollard Willow by Vincent van Gogh.

‘This specific work was on the museum’s wish list as a major potential purchase, because it is one of the most representative watercolours from Van Gogh’s period in The Hague, and until now, there was a gap in our collection here,’ said museum director Axel Rüger.
The painting shows a path along a canal with a pollard willows. In the background are the buildings of the depot at the former Rijnspoor railway station. Van Gogh wrote about the painting in a letter to his brother Theo, describing it as ‘a sombre landscape’.
‘That dead tree beside a stagnant pond covered in duckweed, in the distance a Rijnspoor depot where railway lines cross, smoke-blackened buildings — also green meadows, a cinder road and a sky in which the clouds are racing, grey with an occasional gleaming white edge, and a depth of blue where the clouds tear apart for a moment,’ Van Gogh wrote.
The painting was in private hands, but the museum statement did not say who the previous owner was or how much it paid.