The Potato Eaters
The Potato Eaters (Dutch De Aardappeleters ) is a painting by Vincent van Gogh that he painted in Nuenen in April 1885.
The painting measures 81.5 × 114.5 cm and is painted with oil colors on canvas.
Description
The Potato Eaters is the first major work of van Gogh, on which he worked for several months. The two oil paintings produced between the 13th April and early May.
Be represented at supper seated farmers. Van Gogh, who also tried his short time as a preacher, wanted to express the working relationship of man to nature and to his hands. He writes on April 30, 1885 letter 404 to his brother Theo:
" I would gladly have sent you to this day the image of the potato eaters, but although it forward goes well, it 's not quite ready yet. Although I'll have the actual picture painted in a comparatively short time, and for the most part out of my head, so it has yet tasted a whole winter painting study heads and hands. [ ... ] I have that is very hard to bring the viewer to the idea that these folks who eat at their lamp potatoes, with the same hands in the bowl long, even myself have dug up the earth; so the image speaks of her hands work and the fact that they have honestly earned their food. I have willed that it a completely different way of life than ours reminded that the educated. I want to because even not at all, that each would find it equally beautiful or good. "
The subject exists in two versions in oil, which probably originated in April 1885: The version shown above in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (F 82, JH 764, size 81.5 x 114.5 cm) and an earlier version in the Kröller- Müller Museum, Otterlo (F 78, JH 734, size 72 x 93 cm).
Moreover, van Gogh brought out a cheap lithograph that appears reversed (the artist never made the effort to reverse mirror images. Example, all of his self-portrait mirror ).
Swell
- Vincent van Gogh. All letters, ed. Fritz drake & trans. Eva Schumann. Henschel Verlag, Berlin (GDR), Volume 1-4, 1965 & Band 5-6, 1968, reprint: Lamuv Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1985
- Vincent van Gogh - letters, paintings, drawings, Digital Library CD -ROM, Direct Media Publishing, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-89853-542-8
The " Potato Eaters " are mentioned in the following letters: 399, 402, 403, 404, 405, 408, 409, 418, 424 (Volume 3) 520, 533 ( Volume 4 ) R57 letter to Amice Rappard, B15 letter to Émile Bernard ( Volume 5 )
From Willem van de Wakker the following statement is proved:
"On the emergence of the image " The Potato Eaters " Vincent has informed the Mr van de Wakker following: One evening, after he had painted all day in the open air, he came to the house of the de Groot family over where he worked frequently, and entered, to rest a little. The whole family was sitting under the lamp at dinner. Spontaneous grabbed Vincent to canvas, brushes and palette and the group began to paint. "
( All included in the volumes of the Henschel edition and the CD- ROM of the Direct Media -Verlag )