{"id":1546,"date":"2026-05-09T21:15:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T19:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/horscadre.paris\/the-potato-eaters-the-work-van-gogh-defended-throughout-his-life\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T22:43:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T20:43:55","slug":"the-potato-eaters-the-work-van-gogh-defended-throughout-his-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/horscadre.paris\/en\/the-potato-eaters-the-work-van-gogh-defended-throughout-his-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Potato Eaters \u2014 the work Van Gogh defended throughout his life"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nuenen, Thursday, April 30, 1885. Vincent van Gogh writes a long letter to his brother Theo. He has just completed a painting he has been working on for months, *The Potato Eaters<\/em>*. The painting is about to be sent to Paris. And already, in the letter, Vincent anticipates the criticism<\/strong>: he knows that Theo will find the work too dark, and that the Parisian art dealers will reject it. So he defends, point by point, what he has done. <\/p>\n\n

This defense would never end. During the five years he had left to live<\/strong>, Van Gogh would continue to insist that *The Potato Eaters*<\/em> was his best painting. Theo criticized it, his painter friend Anthon van Rappard tore it apart, and the Parisian art market ignored it. Vincent would not back down. Two years later, he wrote about it again to his sister Wilhelmine. Five years later, in Saint-R\u00e9my, he would even attempt to paint a new version of it<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

This article tells the story of this work in Van Gogh\u2019s own words. It is a work he meticulously prepared, vigorously defended, and maintained throughout his life as the best thing he had ever created\u2014against everyone else\u2019s opinion. <\/p>\n\n

Nuenen, winter 1884\u20131885<\/h2>\n\n

In the winter of 1884, Vincent van Gogh was thirty-one years old. He was living with his parents at the parsonage in Nuenen<\/strong>, a village in North Brabant in the southern Netherlands, where his father, Theodore, was a pastor. He had returned there in December 1883, after his attempt to settle in Drenthe had failed. <\/p>\n\n

His studio at the rectory was not enough for him. He decided to rent a room in a local home<\/strong> so he could work more closely with the farmers. He stayed with the De Groot-van Rooij<\/strong> family, a poor farming family from Nuenen, to whom he paid a modest rent. It was in their home that he would sketch and paint most of his head studies throughout that winter. <\/p>\n\n

His correspondence with Th\u00e9o, who was in Paris working for the Boussod, Valadon & Cie gallery (the successor to Goupil), was extensive during this period. Th\u00e9o sends him a regular monthly allowance. In return, Vincent describes his work in detail, sending him drawings, sketches, and draft letters. He is preparing for a specific project: painting a large canvas depicting peasant figures<\/strong> seated at a table. <\/p>\n\n

Fifty Studies of Heads<\/h2>\n\n

Before painting *The Potato Eaters*<\/em>, Van Gogh produced about fifty studies of<\/strong> peasants\u2019 heads<\/strong> between December 1884 and April 1885. This is documented by the Van Gogh Museum, which houses a large portion of them. These studies are preparatory: Vincent drew and painted the five faces separately, which he would then assemble into the final composition. <\/p>\n\n

This method was unusual for him. Van Gogh rarely worked with such methodical preparatory studies.<\/strong> For this particular painting, he built<\/strong> his composition element by element. First the heads, then the hands, then the whole scene. The Van Gogh Museum has documented this process: Vincent studied, in turn, the faces, the hands, the lamp, and the arrangement of the figures around the table. <\/p>\n\n

Of these studies, only one person identified by name<\/strong> appears in the final painting: Gordina de Groot<\/strong>, a peasant woman from the family with whom he was staying. She is the young woman shown in profile in the center-right of the painting. The four other figures depicted\u2014an elderly man and woman, a young man, and a child seen from behind\u2014are also peasants from Nuenen, but their exact identities have not been established. <\/p>\n\n

Van Gogh thus painted a scene he had actually seen<\/strong>\u2014in the house where he lived\u2014featuring models he knew, but which he reconstructed<\/strong> in his studio based on his studies. As with many of his later works, he combined direct observation with deliberate composition<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n

The painting\u2014what it depicts<\/h2>\n\n

*The Potato Eaters*<\/em> is an oil on canvas<\/strong> measuring 82 centimeters high by 114.5 centimeters wide<\/strong>. It is a landscape format, monumental for an interior scene\u2014Van Gogh deliberately chose dimensions typical of a \u201cfigure painting,\u201d comparable to those used by Salon painters for their large compositions. <\/p>\n\n

The painting depicts five peasants gathered around a wooden table<\/strong> in a dimly lit room illuminated by a kerosene lamp<\/strong> hanging from the ceiling. On the table are a dish of steaming potatoes, cups, and a coffee pot. The figures are eating. <\/p>\n\n

On the left, two figures: an elderly woman seen in profile, and a bearded man facing her. In the center, a young man seen in three-quarter profile, reaching toward the dish. On the right, Gordina de Groot<\/strong>, seen in profile, pouring coffee into a cup. A child<\/strong>, seen from behind, is sitting in the foreground\u2014her head is almost exactly under the lamp. <\/p>\n\n

The faces are angular, weathered, and painted without any softening<\/strong>. The hands are gnarled, thick, and deformed by manual labor<\/strong>. Vincent paints them in shades similar to those of potatoes\u2014a color he describes in Letter 497, dated April 30, 1885, as that of\u201ca potato covered in a thick layer of dirt and, of course, unpeeled.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n\n

The lighting is an intense play of light and shadow<\/strong>, reminiscent of 17th-century Dutch interiors. The ceiling lamp is the only source of light<\/strong>. Everything it does not illuminate is shrouded in dense darkness. The walls behind the figures are barely sketched; shadows obscure their outlines. <\/p>\n\n

The palette is dominated by browns, dark greens, ochres, and Sienna<\/strong>. No bright colors. No pure white. This is precisely the anti-Impressionist<\/strong> palette that Van Gogh embraced in 1885\u2014even as Theo, in Paris, was discovering the bright colors of the Impressionists. <\/p>\n\n

“A painting that smells of bacon and smoke”<\/h2>\n\n

On April 30, 1885, in Letter 497<\/strong>, sent to Theo on his brother\u2019s birthday, Van Gogh defends in advance the painting he has just completed. He knows the painting will be controversial. He knows that dark colors are no longer in fashion. He stands by his work. <\/p>\n\n

In this letter\u2014one of the longest in Van Gogh\u2019s entire correspondence, and one of the most detailed regarding the artist\u2019s pictorial intentions\u2014Vincent explains why a painting of peasants must<\/strong> be what it is: earthy, visceral, and sensual in the most material sense. He establishes a principle. <\/p>\n\n

\n

“If a painting of peasants smells of bacon, smoke, and the steam rising from the potatoes, so much the better!”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

\u2014 Vincent van Gogh, Letter 497 to Theo, Nuenen, April 30, 1885<\/em><\/p>\n\n

The passage surrounding this sentence, in the same letter, expands on the idea: a painting of peasants should not smell of perfume<\/strong>. It must not be softened, polished, or made presentable for bourgeois salons. It must retain the scent of what it depicts\u2014the earth, the smoke from the hearth, the potatoes cooking. <\/p>\n\n

Van Gogh articulated this aesthetic stance in 1885 in opposition to all the mainstream painting<\/strong> of his time. At that time, the Paris Salon celebrated neat genre painting, idealized peasant scenes in the style of Bastien-Lepage, and decorative rustic scenes. Van Gogh took the opposite stance<\/strong>: he advocated for a style of painting that did not seduce<\/strong>, did not flatter, but rather rendered reality faithfully. <\/p>\n\n

In the same letter, he explains that the painting cost him \u201can entire winter of studies depicting heads and hands\u201d<\/em> \u2014a statement about his method that contradicts any notion of a spontaneous work.<\/p>\n\n

Failure \u2014 Th\u00e9o, van Rappard, the Market<\/h2>\n\n

Van Gogh sent *The Potato Eaters*<\/em> to Theo in Paris in early May 1885, hoping to break into the Parisian art market<\/strong>. The result was immediate: failure. <\/p>\n\n

Th\u00e9o himself<\/strong> is lukewarm about it. He finds the painting too dark, too far removed from the light colors that Paris is beginning to favor. He expresses his reservations in a letter to Vincent. Nevertheless, he shows the painting to the art dealer Alphonse Portier<\/strong>, a friend of the Impressionists, whose opinion is more nuanced but who does not offer to buy it. <\/p>\n\n

Anthon van Rappard<\/strong>, a Dutch painter and close friend of Van Gogh\u2019s for several years, lambasted the painting<\/strong> in a letter dated May 24, 1885. He deemed the work clumsy, anatomically inaccurate, and poorly composed. Van Gogh was hurt. His reply, in July 1885, was curt: \u201cYou had no right to condemn my work the way you did.\u201d<\/em> The relationship between the two painters would never recover\u2014they would stop corresponding the following year. <\/p>\n\n

The Paris art market<\/strong>, approached by Th\u00e9o, remains uninterested<\/strong>. No gallery is offering the painting for sale. No collector has come forward. The painting returns to the studio. <\/p>\n\n

For most painters, this threefold criticism\u2014from his brother, his friend, and the market\u2014would serve as an unambiguous warning. Van Gogh pays no attention to it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Retrospective Defense \u2014 1887, 1890<\/h2>\n\n

Two years after his failure, in 1887, Van Gogh was in Paris, living with Theo, and had discovered Impressionism. His color palette had completely transformed. The dark colors of Nuenen had disappeared. And yet, in a letter to his sister Wilhelmine<\/strong> sent from Paris, he continued to defend<\/strong> *The Potato Eaters<\/em>*. <\/p>\n\n

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“The painting of the peasants eating potatoes […] is, after all, the best thing I’ve ever done.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

\u2014 Vincent van Gogh, letter to his sister Wilhelmine, Paris, 1887<\/em><\/p>\n\n

This persistence is striking. Since then, Vincent has painted dozens of infinitely more captivating works\u2014views of Montmartre, Parisian self-portraits, luminous still lifes. His technique has evolved radically. But when his sister asks for his opinion, he returns to the painting of Nuenen. <\/p>\n\n

Three years later, in 1890<\/strong> \u2014five years after the original version and just a few months before his own death\u2014Van Gogh was admitted to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-R\u00e9my-de-Provence. While in the asylum, ill and aware that his southern-inspired art had run its course, he wrote to Theo that he was thinking of reworking<\/strong> *The Potato Eaters<\/em>*. He sketched a new composition depicting a peasant meal. Several drawings from this period, now in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum, bear witness to this attempt. <\/p>\n\n

The project would never come to fruition\u2014Van Gogh died in Auvers-sur-Oise in July 1890 before he could paint this new version. But his intention is well documented. Five years after its critical failure, he still returns to this work as if it were a peak he must reach once more.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

How to View the Work Today<\/h2>\n\n

“The Potato Eaters<\/em> ” is housed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam<\/strong><\/a>, as part of the permanent collection. It is one of the museum\u2019s key works and is on permanent display. <\/p>\n\n

Practical Information:<\/p>\n\n