Van Gogh met Clasina Maria Hoornik, known as Sien, in February 1882. Sien and her mother suggested posing for him, and van Gogh wrote, "They are poor people, and I must say they are more than willing...The young woman is not handsome...but the figure is very graceful and has some charm to me. Also they have the right clothes. Black merino and a nice style of bonnet and a beautiful shawl etc." (Letter to Theo, 3 March 1882, L.T. 178).

Van Gogh soon started an affair with Sien who moved permanently into his apartment on the Schenkweg in The Hague. Due to her former activities as a prostitute, she was pregnant with her second child at the time they met. However, van Gogh proposed marriage in order to help her. This subsequent period of domesticity was one of the happiest times in van Gogh's life. He wrote to his friend van Rappard, "I am pleased with the model I have; I mean that woman who was in my studio when you came, for she is learning every day and understands me. For example, if I sometimes get angry because something is not going well and I fly into a rage and stand up and say 'it's not worth a damn' or even much worse things, she does not take it as an insult as most people naturally do, but gets me to calm down and start all over again. And as regards the tedious searching for this or that position or pose, she has a patience for that. And so I think she is a darling." The relationship between them was frowned upon by his friends, his brother Theo, as well as by Sien's family who constantly tempted her to return to her old profession in order to get away from the poverty of her life with van Gogh. Van Gogh finally left for Drente in September 1883 but was deeply affect by the break.