• Dr. G. A. Molenaar, The Hague [gift from the artist, 1882]
• Miss G.P. Molenaar, Nunspeet [R 1960]
• Mrs. Henry Drake, New York.
• Anon. sale, Christie's, New York, 16 November 1983, lot 122.
• Anon. sale, Christie's, New York, 14 November 1996, lot 112.
• Anon. sale, Christie's, New York, 9 May 2001 [$985,000]

• Paris, Nouveaux Musées, Sa vie et son oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh: Exposition internationale de 1937, June-October 1937, no. 111 (illustrated).

Catalogues raisonnés:

• F870: Faille, Jacob Baart de la (1970) [1928] The Works of Vincent van Gogh. His Paintings and Drawings, Amsterdam: J.M. Meulenhoff, no. 870 .
• JH84 : Jan Hulsker (1980), The Complete Van Gogh, Oxford: Phaidon, no.  84.
  
• With added touches by Anton Mauve (de la Faille, letter 245 also recording that Vincent gave the watercolor to the doctor who treated him the following year for gonorrhea). The watercolor fetched $985,000 at a Christie's sale in 2001.
• See also F869 and F871, as well as the sketches in letter 192.
• Executed in the Hague while on a visit to Anton Mauve (Etten period). It is one of three such watercolors of young women from Scheveningen (a fishing village near The Hague), all illustrated with sketches in letter 192 to his brother Theo 18 December 1881. Vincent was pleased with these watercolors and thought them salable. However he eventually found watercolor too intractable and demanding a medium and, despite the advice of Mauve and others, concentrated instead on figure drawing from life when he set up his studio in The Hague at the start of the following year. (Naifeh & Smith, pp. 257, 267).
• In June 1881, Vincent was treated for gonorrhea (Naifeh and Smith, pp. 294-5). Letter 237 records the fact, and letter 245 that he gave the drawing as a present to the doctor treating him.
• Letters
• Letter 192 to Theo van Gogh. The Hague, on or about Sunday, 18 December 1881. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Van Gogh Museum. "I’m still going to Mauve’s every day, during the day to paint, in the evenings to draw. Have now painted 5 studies and 2 watercolours, and naturally a few scratches.
  ...
  I still have all kinds of things to tell you which you’ll perhaps be interested in, about the way of working from a model at Etten, but as I already said, I’ll write to you about this later – soon. I’m sending you herewith scratches of the two watercolours. I have every hope of making something saleable within a relatively short time, yes, believe that if necessary it ought to be possible to sell these two. Especially the one in which M. has added some touches. But I’d prefer to keep them myself for a while, the better to remember various things regarding their execution.
  How marvellous watercolour is for expressing space and airiness, allowing the figure to be part of the atmosphere and life to enter it."
• Letter 237 to Theo van Gogh. The Hague, on or about Thursday, 8 June 1882. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Van Gogh Museum. "Should you come here towards the end of June, I hope you’ll find me back at work, but at present I’m in hospital, although I’ll only be here for about a fortnight. For some 3 weeks I’d been suffering a good deal from sleeplessness and chronic fever, and felt pain on passing water. And now it turns out that I’ve got a very mild case of what’s known as ‘a dose of the clap’. So I have to stay quietly in bed, swallow a lot of quinine tablets and from time to time have instillations of pure water or alum water, thus as harmless as could be. There’s no reason for you to be in the least concerned about this, but as you know one has to take this sort of thing seriously and act immediately, because neglect can make it incurable or exacerbate matters. Take the case of Breitner [George Hendrik Breitner, who accompanied Vincent on sketching trips in The Hague at this time] who’s still here, though in another ward,5 and will probably leave soon — he doesn’t know I’m here.
  I’d be grateful if you didn’t mention this, because people sometimes think it’s terribly serious or make it sound serious by telling exaggerated tales. Of course I’m telling you exactly what it is, and you needn’t keep silent if someone asks you directly, and in any event you needn’t worry."
• Letters 245 to Theo van Gogh. The Hague, Thursday, 6 and Friday, 7 July 1882. Vincent van Gogh: The Letters. Van Gogh Museum. "I’m adding a word today to my enclosed letter of yesterday evening. And can tell you that I’ve been to the doctor at the hospital and he said that since I had been feeling quite well recently I needn’t come back unless it got worse.
  While not completely normal and not entirely free of pain, the fact that I was able to pass water regularly on those days is proof that things are on the mend.
  So, this afternoon I at once sent a drawing (not to the director) as a small gesture to the doctor who treated me. It was a Scheveningen woman knitting that I did at Mauve’s studio and in fact the best watercolour I had, largely because Mauve had added some touches and repeatedly came across to draw my attention to one point or another while I was working. I would have liked to keep it as a souvenir, but with that delightful feeling of getting better I wanted to show my gratitude."

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