Van Gogh's cousin by marriage Anton Mauve became his first real teacher after a couple of lessons in the summer of 1881, and Van Gogh began attending his studio daily from late that November. Mauve taught him watercolour and, unusually for the teaching methods of the time, encouraged him to paint original subjects rather than copy other artists' work from the start^[1]. In December 1881 Mauve sent him a full box of oil paints, brushes, palette knife and turpentine, and Van Gogh wrote to Theo that it was settled: he was going to start painting with oils. He remained grateful to Mauve for the rest of his life, later writing that Mauve had given him back his courage at a moment when he badly needed it^[1].

Around this time, Van Gogh's uncle Cor, an art dealer, gave him his first paid commission: twelve drawn views of The Hague at two and a half guilders each. The arrangement did not last. Cor's customers wanted picturesque souvenir images, but Van Gogh produced drawings of gasworks, an iron foundry, a fish-drying barn and a carpenter's yard, subjects he considered more honest but that Cor judged unsalable, and no further commissions followed^[2].

Windmills and mills appear repeatedly in Van Gogh's work from this period and after. In one letter to Theo he describes spotting a row of windmills from the train window near Dordrecht and travelling out to draw them despite the rain, glad at least to come away with what he called a souvenir of the trip^[3]. A windmill on the Laak, close to where he was living and working through these years, belongs to that same habit of seeking out mills, canals and the working edges of the city as subjects.