St. Clemens Church, not to be confused with St. Clemens Church in Gerwen also in the municipality of Nuenen, Gerwen and Nederwetten, is the Roman Catholic parish church of Nuenen.
In the March 1884 drawing The Kingfisher, the structure towers over a body of water. Vincent does not draw it very accurately. The fairly new church, completed in 1872, has an octagonal, narrow tower. Vincent drew a quadrangular one, in which the bell holes and roof also differ from reality. He possibly put together a composition based on sketches. Also in The Avenue of Poplars from the fall of 1885, Vincent paints the church in a vista of Nuenen.
Things do not go well with Andreas Pauwels, the pastor of the church who lives next door to Schafrat and Vincent's studio. Pauwels thinks the painter should not demean himself to "people of lesser standing" and works against having residents model for him. When one of his models - Gordina de Groot, whom he regularly paints and who appears on The Potato Eaters - becomes unmarried and pregnant, he unfairly blames Vincent.
