Potato Eaters. The Potato Eaters is an oil painting by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh painted in April 1885 in Nuenen, Netherlands.
It is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The original oil sketch of the painting is at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, and he also made lithographs of the image, which are held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
The painting is considered to be one of Van Gogh's masterpieces. During March and the beginning of April 1885 he sketched studies for the painting, and corresponded with his brother Theo, who was not impressed with his current work or the sketches Van Gogh sent him in Paris.
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 p
It is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The original oil sketch of the painting is at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, and he also made lithographs of the image, which are held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
The painting is considered to be one of Van Gogh's masterpieces. During March and the beginning of April 1885 he sketched studies for the painting, and corresponded with his brother Theo, who was not impressed with his current work or the sketches Van Gogh sent him in Paris.
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 p
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