Today marks the birthday of the Dutch painter Vincent William Van Gogh, who was born on March 30, 1854, and died on July 29, 1890.
Van Gogh began his art late and died early, but for ten years he drew almost 900 paintings, the most famous of which was "Eat the Potatoes".
"Eat potatoes" by Van Gogh .. a miserable painting that reflects the harsh reality of the farmers
Peasants with coarse and wrinkled hands, faces with harsh features, prominent bones illuminated by a faint light of a hanging lantern, a large potato dish extending to the fingers that look like bones for excessive emaciation and weakness, a woman pouring coffee, and a table with worn and worn out limbs. All these were details drawn by Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh in his famous painting "Potato Eaters", which may not be easily attracted to the eye because of the darkness of its atmosphere and the features of its somewhat intimate characters.
Potato eaters are rated by Van Gogh's most distinguished artwork. The painting is now in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. There is also a primary oil painting at the Kroller Müller Museum in Utrillo. Stone prints of the picture are made in the Van Gogh Collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Van Gogh produced this painting between April and May of the year 1885, and he was thirty-two years old.
This painting shows Van Gogh's attachment to the simple life of the general public, and she had to depict the harsh reality of rural life, so he gave peasants rough rough faces, bones, and working hands. He wanted to show in this way that they removed the land themselves with these hands that they put in the dish and that they thus gained Their food faithfully.
Van Gogh felt sympathy for those with minimal and professions such as industrialists and peasants. And he himself was living at the time of subsistence life, as he lived in an old house and slept on a sleazy bed, and he strived to live his life day by day. Life was neither beautiful nor easy for him, as he saw many faults and appearances of the dove around him, and he showed some of these faults in his paintings.
In this painting, Van Gogh is painted by a peasant family consisting of five individuals, two men, two women, and a young woman, who sit around a table and eat potatoes in the light of a pale lamp.
And he chose for that a dark and monochromatic color scheme, where green dominated his painting with multiple shades of dark brown, yellowish to a few reds, and the lighting in the interior is produced by the suspended oil lamp on the ceiling, which attracts attention in this painting through the ingenious method that The artist distributed light in the corners and corners of the room.
Then there is the woman who pours coffee, and the table looks with her worn out and worn out edges. There is also a large plate of potatoes and the fingers extending towards it that look like bones for being overly weak and weak. In the view of Van Gogh, it is the same bare fingers that these simple peasants dig their land to earn a living, with hard work, hardship and honesty.
Van Gogh had stated that he wanted to photograph the peasants as they are. He chose a coarse and ugly specimen on purpose, believing that he would thus obtain a more natural painting saying: “As you can see, I very much wanted to perpetuate that moment. The moment of these people eating potatoes in the light of their small lamps with their coarse hands in which they cultivate the land. Rest assured that they got Their food honestly, this painting perpetuates a completely different lifestyle from a civilized style. Therefore, I do not want anyone to like the painting without knowing why I drew it. "
It wasn't long before this painting, which critics consider today as one of Van Gogh's greatest paintings, appeared despite the fact that the painting did not achieve that great success during his life.
It is worth noting that, despite all the criticism leveled against this painting, and despite hundreds of paintings that he later drew and achieved his international reputation, Van Gogh (1853-1890) remained believing that "eating potatoes" is his greatest work, which he said About her, "If I had no real artistic value associated with this painting, I would not have any real artistic value for the rest of my life, no matter what I achieve from my works."