Vincent van Gogh
The Potato Eaters
1885
Vincent van Gogh's 'The Potato Eaters' (1885), painted in Nuenen in the southern Netherlands, gathers a peasant family around a dim oil lamp to eat a modest supper of boiled potatoes. Van Gogh wanted the viewer to sense that the hands which dip into the shared dish are 'the same hands that have dug the earth', and worked up the heavy-featured faces and earthen colour to drive the message home. His most ambitious early composition, it is the cornerstone of Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum.
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