Charrette de boeuf (The Ox Cart)

1. 1

   What is written

   Painted at Nuenen in July 1884, between two letters to Theo; the museum gives “July, 1884” and nothing more.

   • ’t laatst wat ik maakte zijn een paar nog al groote studies van Ossekarren, een zwarten os en een roodbonten.Letter 452, to Theo, on or about 20 July 1884
   • ik werk nog al veel s’morgens vroeg of s’avondsLetter 452
   • Door de buitengewone hitte en droogte gedurende de laatste dagenDe Zuid-Willemsvaart (Helmond), 9 July 1884
2. 2

   Records of those days

   • Helmond rain gaugeKNMI station 896, 5 km from Nuenen, daily since 1868. Dated by the day the rain fell, as in the GHCN/ECA&D copy; KNMI’s file lists the same 1880s values two days later.
   • Brussels/Saint-Josse thermometerDaily highest and lowest temperature for 1884 in the GHCN series labelled Uccle. The instrument was then at Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, Brussels; these are regional context for Nuenen.
   • The Helmond newspaperDe Zuid-Willemsvaart, 9, 16 and 26 July 1884: heat and drought, lightning at Stiphout, storms on 13 and 24 July.
   • RMI station historyThe 1884 readings were made at Brussels/Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, before the move to Uccle. RMI documents a relocation effect and adjustment of monthly means; comparability of this daily series across the move has not been established.

   Not found or not yet searched

   • No closer daily thermometer record has been keyed for this study; Utrecht and Maastricht readings exist in the newspapers.
   • The KNMI Meteorologisch Jaarboek for 1884 is not online.
   • The museum’s record has no description of the picture, so its sky and light are not read here.
3. 3

   Each claim tested

   • “een stoffig pad”, the dusty path in letter 451, about 2 July. The Helmond gauge caught 6.6 mm from 20 June to 8 July 1884, the 11th driest such spell in 151 years; the 1991–2020 average is 39.9 mm.
   • “buitengewone hitte en droogte”, extraordinary heat and drought, in the Helmond paper of 9 July. Brussels/Saint-Josse daily maxima for 1 to 16 July averaged 27.4 °C, while Helmond had a dry spell. No century temperature rank is reported because daily-series comparability across the later move to Uccle is unverified.
   • The day the ox-cart was painted. Between about 2 and 20 July; nothing says which day, or whether it was painted outdoors.
4. 4

   Verdict

   Van Gogh painted his ox-carts in a heat wave that broke into thunderstorms: a dry, hot fortnight at the start of July, then the storm of 13 July over Helmond. He was working early and late in the day.

   • Partially agrees“een stoffig pad” One of the driest such spells on a gauge 5 km away; dust itself is not measured.
   • Partially agrees“buitengewone hitte en droogte” Dry at Helmond, with high temperatures recorded in Brussels and contemporary local reports of heat; the thermometer is a regional observation.
   • UnknownThe day painted The letters bound the window only to about 2 to 20 July.

What this cannot tell you. The window’s start rests on letter 451’s silence about ox-carts. Temperature comes from Brussels/Saint-Josse; rain from Helmond, 5 km away. The later Uccle location must not be used as the 1884 station location. The date correction between the two rain files is checked against two dated storms, not confirmed by KNMI. Readings that failed NOAA’s quality checks are left out. Counts of complete years describe how much data survives, not whether the station stayed comparable.