Description

PUBLICATION DEATAILS: 25” w x 18” h. Color reproduction circa 1960. Published by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Bottom center: Vincent van Gogh 1853-1890.  Aardappeleters , Nuenen 1885.  Potatoe-eaters. Les Mangeurs de Pommes du Terre. Lower left: Edition Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Lower right: corrected with the original painting printed in the Netherlands.

DESCRIPTION: Aardappeleter  (Dutch) or in English, The Potato Eaters, is an oil painting by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh painted in April 1885 in Nuenen, Netherlands. It is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It is a sober reflection of the lives of French peasants in the late 1800s.
“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’.” (Van ogh Museum)