Van Gogh’s Masterpiece-The Potato Eaters (1885)
Dualism and The End
Note: This is part VI of a series on Vincent van Gogh’s early adult life. You can read each story separately, but if you feel like you’re missing out, check out the other parts.
In 1885, Vincent van Gogh painted his first masterpiece. ‘The Potato Eaters’, features a dinner scene of the De Groot family in Nuenen. With his experience of painting peasant life in Drenthe, Vincent painted the family gathered around for supper, with the faint light from an oil lamp on the table. The style, colour and mood of the painting are remarkably similar to “The Peasant Burning Weeds” which he painted two years prior.
At the time, the painting received many critical interpretations, even from Vincent’s close painter-friend Rappard:
Why may that man on the right not have a knee or a belly or lungs?… And why must the woman on the left have a sort of little pipe stem with a cube on it for a nose? And with such a manner of working you dare to invoke the names of Millet and Breton Come on! Art is too important, it seems to me, to be treated so cavalierly¹.
Vincent, too insulted for words replied:
My dear friend Rappard,
I just received your letter — to my surprise. You hereby get it back.
Sincerely,
Vincent²
Rappard, who inspired Vincent to abandon ‘civilised society’ for the heath of Drenthe, was not the only person who was sceptical of the work, his brother Theo also had doubts about the bleakness of the scene. But Vincent was mindful to avoid “Insipidly pretty peasants”, and considered it his duty to educate city folk on the realities of peasant life:
If a peasant painting smells of bacon, smoke, potato steam — fine — that’s not unhealthy — if a stable smells of manure — very well, that’s what a stable’s for³.
The first impression for an onlooker, could be the soberness of the scene or the meagreness of the meal. The onlooker may even feel a a bit uncomfortable by the unsuspected, coarse facial expressions of the family. An everydayness dominates the painting. A repetitiveness that is devoid of any kind of heroism or uniqueness. Yet it would be a mistake to interpret this as weakness, to see this painting as a portrayal of economic failure, or even a waste of life. To Vincent, the De Groot family aren’t the losers of society, but the unsung heroes, “better in many respects than the civilized world⁴”.
Literally translated, the word potato in Dutch (aardappel) means Earth Apple. “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…they have thus honestly earned their food⁵”. “The Potato Eaters”, or “Aardappel Eters”, symbolises a deep connection from the family towards the food on the table.
“Owing nothing, yet possessing everything” is phrase that springs to mind. A phrase which Vincent often used in his London and 1st Parisian period, when he felt such a strong urge to identify himself with his father. For years he had tried in vain to continue a great cycle of priesthood, stretching from his grandfather to him. Since Vincent abandoned his quest to become a priest and instead followed his “teekenlust”, the relationship between father and son had become strained — after all, there were serious considerations from Dorus’ side of having his son committed to a mental asylum when he roamed the fields of Borniage, after his dismissal as the local priest. Nevertheless, after Vincent left Drenthe in 1883, his parents took him in after not having seen him for more than 2 years. There was such a thing as unconditional love in the Van Gogh household after all. Vincent spent almost two years living with them, perfecting his craft, which was now completely dedicated to depicting peasant life - like he experienced in Drenthe.
In March 1885, the unthinkable happened. After a long journey across the heath, Dorus returned home in the evening and collapsed on the front porch, dying instantly. He was only 63 years old. “The Potato Eaters”, Vincent’s first masterpiece was completed barely a month later. Vincent never managed to prove himself towards his father, nor set the record straight.
As is so often the case with endings, they are rarely cathartic. It is only with the gift of hindsight that we can pinpoint crucial turning points in the lives of those we admire. Even in death, after a clumsy shot to the chest and days of agony, Vincent’s own ending wasn’t in any way the grand finale we like to imagine. It wasn’t the romantic event from the song: “You took your life as lovers often do⁶”. And John Bunyan may have envisaged “trumpets sounding on the other side⁷”, but in truth an ending is often quiet and painful. There is very little heroism to an ending. The most crucial ending for Vincent, his period of mental anguish in Borniage, probably felt much more like a float from one state of existence to another. Make no mistake, this was an existential crisis, but that year in isolation for Vincent was much more like wondering in the dark, than a choice between one path or the other.
When I started this work, I thought it would be a good exercise, relating to my own experience in leaving behind the city of London — to treat writing this series as a swan-song, as it were. Incidentally the place I was heading for was Drenthe, where I grew up. The parts in between happened by accident, because I got hooked and because I was introduced to John Bunyan and his ‘Mr. Valiant for Truth’. I’ll leave out the comparisons between myself and Vincent van Gogh, it would be a vain and probably rather banal read. Of course there are similarities, but this is what great art does- we find parts of ourselves in it.
In my research, I discovered two places still grappling with the legacy of the 19th century. The London Vincent adored was the centre of the world, Pax Britannia. Now it longs for this ghost and is looking more and more inward. In 2018, soon to be foreign secretary Dominic Raab made the jaw dropping revelation he hadn’t appreciated “the peculiar geographic economic entity that is the United Kingdom” and that “We’re particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing”. The satirical political writer John Crace wrote for the Guardian at the time : “While no man is an island the UK might be⁸.” — referring to the classic poem by John Donne.
At the same time London seems unable to shake off the yoke of Victorian inequality. A city that is a supposed beacon for progress, with Soho gay bars, Italian coffee, giant screens on Piccadilly Circus and the newest gadgets — so many sleep under bridges or on benches. Increasing privatisation has brought forth the weirdest examples from London’s city hall siting entirely on ground owned by a Kuwaiti investment fund, to increasingly common “private walkways” in the city. The richest of the city have panoramic views of the river, while the rest of the capital is stacked behind tall skyscrapers. The ghost of Vincent’s Britain and inequality of today are of course intertwined, they are two sides of the same coin carried into the 21st century.
Like London’s “private walkways” Drenthe is also riven with “pseudo-public” spaces. The huge swathes of bogs and moors have almost completely been replaced by straight roads, agriculture and residential areas. Only pockets of the original landscape remain, conserved under zoning plans and bureaucracy. Drenthe has been tamed. Endlessly roaming the heath is simply no longer an option because of enclosure. The wild does what it says on the tin: it’s WILD. As Vincent himself discovered, it can be relentless, lonely, bitterly cold and life can often be poor. For those who did not have the option of escape, the prospect of a tamed wild with pockets of it remaining for aesthetic reasons, may have given a sense of security, but it also limits experience. From our gardens, looking over the fences to the enclosed fields, we define ourselves by the lines we have drawn on the map, leaving little room for change or the unconventional. The Dutch saying “Just act normally, it’s weird enough” captures this. Phase out the wild and the unpredictable, life comes to a standstill. Whatever we put inside of the fences is like the contents of a glass case. Ironically, when we secretly daydream about a life free from enclosure, we idealise those like Vincent van Gogh. The free thinkers, who were unable to root themselves. But at the same time we are happy to make such an existence increasingly difficult. If Vincent van Gogh looked at a map of Drenthe today, it would have unlikely stirred in him a vision of a new Barbizon.
I’m almost at the end of this series, but before I conclude, it’s worthwhile noting Vincent’s remarkable talent for writing letters. As Vincent aged, his letters became longer, more descriptive and more personal. This series could not have been written by the Van Gogh Museum, which made the letters publicly accessible and available in both Dutch and English. From these letters it is difficult not to feel affection for Vincent and his remarkable pigheaded stubbornness. His quixotic morality determined every step of the way. I wanted to share an excerpt which I couldn’t place when I found it, but for the sake of thorougness I’ll leave it here. I trod on this excerpt by accident when I was writing part V, it’s from letter 388 in the Van Gogh Letter Archive and in this letter, Vincent remembers his theological disaster in Amsterdam and gives a surprising explanation to his educational failures:
“You know that I, who have learned other languages, could have managed to master that miserable little bit of Latin..but I said I couldn’t cope. This was an excuse, because I didn’t want to tell my protectors that I regard the whole University (or at least the Theology Faculty) as an unspeakable mess…⁹”
Whether true, partially true, or an attempt from Vincent to rewrite his own history, standing by his principles consciously defined Vincent’s character. And ultimately the truth is what we make of it.
The legacy of Vincent van Gogh goes beyond his personality of course. He belongs to one of the greatest artists of all time. I confess that when I was a student, I disliked his work. I believe I even called it “amateurish” at one point. I was of course very wrong indeed; Vincent would go on to develop a style which we now call “pre-expressionist”, inspired by the Impressionist movement — which translated the impression of a scene to a painting — Vincent flipped this concept on its head. Instead of capturing an impression, he captured scenes according to how he felt.
This may seem simple and obvious enough from a modern standpoint. But the art movement Vincent set in motion was revolutionary. It has influenced not only the arts, but every fabric of society. It’s why we teach children arts in school — to allow expression. If a child in a modern school draws a pink elephant, it wouldn’t be scolded for its misinterpretation of the elephants colour, it would be applauded. Children in schools today owe much to Vincent van Gogh.
But what separates a bright little drawing of a pink elephant and Vincent van Gogh, is that instead of expressing his depressed mental state in his work, he painted to conceal it. Hidden under such bright and uplifting colours lies the dark oblong of Vincent’s mind. This dualism gives his work an unparalleled richness and depth. In part I and II of this series, I wrote about words of St Paul’s ‘Corinthians’ “ringing in Vincent’s head like an echo chamber”. Ironically, these words encapsulate the essence of Vincent van Gogh’s work: “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing”.
Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime. ‘The Red Vineyard’, now in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, was sold to Anna Boch in 1888. It was only after his death that his work generated considerable interest. Helene Kröller-Müller, was one of the first to start collecting his work. In her lifetime (1869–1939), she bought 90 paintings and many more drawings. Three of Vincent van Gogh’s sketches of ‘The Potato Eaters’ are on display in the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. The final work is one of the centrepieces of The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which opened its doors in 1973.
Notes:
¹From letter: 503
² From letter: 504
³ From letter: 497
⁴ Ibid
⁵ Ibid
⁶ Don Maclean, ‘Vincent’, 1972, United Artists Records/ BGO Records
⁷ J. Bunyan, The Pilgrims Progress, 1678, Book 10
⁸ J. Crace, 09–11–2021, The Guardian UK, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/09/remembrance-sunday-armistice-day-raab-island
⁹From letter: 388
