| Original title, in Dutch: De Aardappeleters | |
| Artist | Vincent van Gogh |
|---|---|
| Year | 1885 |
| Type | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 82 cm × 114 cm (32.3 in × 44.9 in) |
| Location | Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam |
The Potato Eaters (Dutch: De Aardappeleters) is a painting by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh which he painted in April 1885 while in Nuenen, Netherlands.[1] It is housed in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The version at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo is a preliminary oil sketch.
During March and the beginning of April 1885 he sketched studies for the painting, and corresponded with his brother, who was not impressed with his current work or the sketches Van Gogh sent him. He worked on the painting from April 13 until the beginning of May, when it was mostly done except for minor changes which he made with a small brush later the same year.
Van Gogh said he wanted to depict peasants as they really were. He deliberately chose coarse and ugly models, thinking that they would be natural and unspoiled in his finished work: "You see, I really have wanted to make it so that people get the idea that these folk, who are eating their potatoes by the light of their little lamp, have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labor and — that they have thus honestly earned their food. I wanted it to give the idea of a wholly different way of life from ours — civilized people. So I certainly don’t want everyone just to admire it or approve of it without knowing why." [2]
Writing to his sister Willemina two years later in Paris Van Gogh still considered The Potato Eaters his most successful painting: "What I think about my own work is that the painting of the peasants eating potatoes that I did in Nuenen is after all the best thing I did").[3] However, the work was criticized by his friend Anthon van Rappard soon after it was painted. This was a blow to van Gogh's confidence as an emerging artist, and he wrote back to his friend, "you...had no right to condemn my work in the way you did" (July 1885), and later, "I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it." (September 1885).[4]
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Van Gogh made a lithograph study of The Potato Eaters before embarking on the painting proper. He sent impressions to his brother and later says in a letter [5] that he made the lithograph from memory in the space of a day.
Van Gogh had first experimented with lithography in The Hague in 1882. Though he appreciated small scale graphic work and was an enthusiastic collector of English engravings he worked relatively little in graphic mediums.[6] In a letter dated around 3 December 1882 [7] he remarks
Van Gogh is often associated in people's minds with the Impressionist movement but in fact his artistic roots lay much closer to home in the artists of the Hague School such as Anton Mauve and Jozef Israëls.
In a letter to his brother Theo written mid-June 1884 from Theunen Vincent remarks
Before Vincent painted The Potato Eaters Israëls has already treated the same subject in his A Peasant Family at the Table and judging from comment in a letter to Theo 11 March 1882 Vincent has seen this (or at least a variation of it) [9] and had been inspired by it to produce his own version of it. Compositionally the two are very similar:in both paintings the composition is centered by a figure whose back is turned to us.
Thieves stole the early version of The Potato Eaters, the Weaver's Interior, and Dried Sunflowers from the Kröller-Müller Museum in December, 1988. In April, 1989, the thieves returned Weaver's Interior in an attempt to gain a $2.5 million ransom.[10] The police recovered the other two on July 13, 1989. A ransom was not paid.
On April 14, 1991, the Vincent Van Gogh National Museum was robbed of twenty major paintings including the final version of The Potato Eaters. For unknown reasons, the robbers abandoned the art 35 minutes after the robbery, and the paintings were quickly recovered.[11]
The Potato Eaters (1885), oil on canvas, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
The Potato Eaters (1885), oil on canvas, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo