• C. Mouwen jr., Breda
• Sale Mouwen, Amsterdam [F. Muller] 3 May 1904, 36 [not sold]
• Oldenzeel Art Gallery, Rotterdam
• Hugo Tutein Nolthenius, Delft
• Ph. Gelb, New York
• Sale London [Sotheby] 22 March 1961, 108
• Ch Sussmann, Paris
• Sale Paris [Paris Galliéra] 16 June 1964, 24
• Amsterdam, P. and N. de Boer Foundation

• First exhibited 1903, Rotterdam

cataloghi ragionati:

• F852: Faille, Jacob Baart de la (1970) [1928] The Works of Vincent van Gogh. His Paintings and Drawings, Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff, nº852 .
• JH275 : Jan Hulsker (1980), The Complete Van Gogh, Oxford: Phaidon, nº 275.
  
• In the winter of 1882, Vincent returned to his regular theme of The Sower (see, for example, his Etten version F858), but this time his studies were more carefully observed and set in their surroundings. The heads in these figures are carefully modelled as well, essentially Vincent's first attempts at portraiture (Hulsker p. 66 - 9). See the editors' note n. 7 in letter 291 for a discussion of Millet's influence in his portaiture of peasants.
• Letters
• Letter 291 to Theo van Gogh. The Hague, between Monday, 4 and Saturday, 9 December 1882. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Van Gogh Museum. "What I wanted to say is this. The idea of drawing types of working man from the people for the people, and circulating them as a popular publication, seeing the whole thing as necessarily being an affair of duty and charity — that and nothing else than that — see, that idea is such that I believe one is entitled to assume, even if it isn’t successful immediately or at once: The thing is as true today as it was yesterday, and will be as true tomorrow. And that it’s thus something that one can begin and pursue with serenity, something whose good outcome one also needn’t doubt or despair of — provided one doesn’t weaken or lose heart.
  I said to myself that what I should do was obvious — do my very best with the drawings. So since my letter on this subject I now have some new ones.
  ...
  Then a second sower with a light brown bombazine jacket and trousers, so this figure comes out light against the black field bounded at the end by a row of pollard willows. This is a very different type, with a fringe of beard, broad shoulders, a little stocky, a little like an ox in the sense that his whole appearance has been shaped by working on the land. If you like, more the type of an Eskimo, thick lips, broad nose."

• ; Naifeh, Steven; Smith, Gregory White (2011) Van Gogh: The Life, Profile Books ISBN: 978-1846680106.