"At Eternity's Gate ("Worn Out")"
by GOGH, Vincent van, Lithograph, 497 x 34 0 mm
Catalogue numbers: F 1662, JH 268.
In September 1881 van Gogh made a drawing of a despondent man with his head buried in his hands by the dead embers of a fire. He gave it the title Worn Out, after one of his favourite prints by Thomas Faed. He returned to the subject in November 1882 in The Hague. The model was again Adrianus Zuyderland, an inhabitant of the Home for Dutch Protestant Pensioners. This new drawing served as the base of the lithograph made a few days later. Initially van Gogh also called the lithograph Worn Out, like the earlier drawing. Later he changed the title to At Eternity’s Gate, which was used in one of his favourite books.
Van Gogh was attached to this lithograph, while living in Paris he considered it worth framing, and in 1890, in the asylum at Saint-R�my, he created a painting after the lithograph.