Van Gogh in

Ds. Meijjes (jr.)

In early July 1877, Vincent van Gogh met Jeremias “Jeremie” Posthumus Meijjes (1831–1908) and his wife, Jeanne Louise Agathe Tilanus (1834–1881), at the home of the minister Reinier Posthumus Meijjes, an acquaintance of his father. They spent an enjoyable evening together, and Vincent subsequently visited the couple a few times. He also once heard Meijjes Jr preach in the Westerkerk and was impressed. Vincent’s high regard for the Meijjes family is evident in a letter to his brother Theo from September 1877:

“A few days ago I spent an evening in the study of the Rev. Jeremie Meijjes, not the old minister but that very man who had moved me so much in church. It was a pleasant evening, he asked a thing or two about London, about which I could tell quite a lot, and he told me about his work and the blessings he had apparently experienced. Hanging in the room was a very good charcoal drawing of a religious service which he was accustomed to keep with him at home on winter evenings, very good, Israëls would have liked it, the congregation was made up of workers and their wives, there are similar subjects in Doré’s book about London. Went himself to London for a fortnight. Has a large family, 6 or 7 children, his wife has something indescribable – something of Ma – or of the wife of the Rev. Jones, for example. In a word, it’s a Christian family there in all its strength and bloom, there is sometimes an expression of very great happiness on the tired face of that man, and when one is in that house one feels something of ‘put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground’.” Read the complete letter