Potato Eaters Analysis

Vincent van Gogh’s painting style changed drastically throughout his brief years as an artist. In 1885 he painted The Potato Eaters (Figure 1) which is dark with realistic looking peasant figures sitting around a table eating dinner. Prior to 1885 and during 1885 van Gogh did not have a large history of mental breakdown like he did post 1886. The Potato Eaters is one of his most famous paintings from before he began to have mental breakdowns. After he began to have breakdown, van Gogh’s paintings began to get more colorful. In 1887 he painted Self-Portrait, 1887 (Figure 2) which is a self-portrait of himself that is more imaginative and colorful than The Potato Eaters. By 1887 van Gogh had begun to show signs of mental issues, but he had not

Just as van Gogh began to work on the painting, his father died suddenly which forced him to leave his studio and return home. The painting depicts a poor peasant family at dinner sitting around a table eating. The room is dimly lit with only a small oil lamp lighting up the room. The entire room and house looks to be made of wood with only a few cooking items, a clock, and a painting with a cross on the walls. The faces of the figures are realistic, and they are not imaginative looking like van Gogh’s later work. The people in his painting are wearing clothes that the peasants or lower working class people of the time period would have worn. The male figure looks to be the working man of the house who had probably just returned from a day of work. There looks to be two older figures on the right side of the painting. One holding a cup and the other pouring what looks to be coffee or tea into cups. Van Gogh accurately depicts a family in that time period: he shows a husband and wife with a daughter, who are now taking care of their parents. The shapes in The Potato Eaters are all very rigid: there are not any swirls, mostly straight lines. Unlike Self Portrait, 1887 and especially The Starry Night and Self Portrait, 1889, The Potato Eaters does not have very much color. There are no bright vivid colors in The Potato Eaters: all the colors are dark and gloomy, which would accurately represent the life of a peasant at the time. Van Gogh moved to Paris in 1886 where he painted Self Portrait,