With its depressing colors and blatant bloopers, The Potato Eaters (1885) is nary the sort of painting you’d expect to have been created by Vincent van Gogh. In his lifetime, people hated it. But the post-Impressionist told his sister it was his best work yet.
The controversial early piece takes the center of a new Mistake or Masterpiece? exhibition, which will run through February 13, 2022, in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Accompanying it is a life-size reconstruction of the work that invites selfie-taking admirers to stand out from its murky setup.
Van Gogh worked on the painting after his art dealer brother Theo requested for something to be submitted to a salon in 1885. The painter—then living in Brabant, in the southern Netherlands—was fascinated by the rural life of local farmers, as well as the work of Dutch painter Jozef Israels, most known for focusing on working-class scenes, so he based his next piece on them.
The artist portrayed five peasants in a cramped farming household in earth colors “like the color of a really dusty potato, unpeeled of course.” To capture the harsh rural life, the figures were painted with “raw, flat faces with low foreheads and thick lips” and scrawny hands, drawing from what he learned from the pseudo-science of face-reading.
The art was filled with errors, The Economist reports. The eye contact was off and the torsos were gangly. Rather than anatomical or technical perfection, though, Van Gogh felt he nailed it with the message conveyed by the dull colors and awkward shapes.
Of course, this wasn’t a conventionally beautiful piece of work, and it failed to capture the gaze of art lovers of the time.
It was only when the artist moved to France the following year did he discover the bright hues of the Impressionists, sparking the creation of vibrant, more famous masterpieces like Starry Night and Sunflowers.
The real-life recreation of The Potato Eaters, meanwhile, honors its uninspiring color scheme and objects: you’ll find the same clock, cutlery, and coffee pot in the scene. Of course, potatoes are a must.
Leave a Reply