Good day mates! I am back, and this time its more Van Gogh. I hope you enjoyed my last post because I am sure you will enjoy this one even more. After talking to you last time, I decided to look for a Van Gogh painting that reflected his artistic characteristics of his early years. As I searched websites online, I came across his first famous painting, “The Potato Eaters”.
This oil on canvas consists of what seems to be a family of five peasants in their residence eating at their dinner table. The room is dark but with an oil light lamp which allows us to analyze the painting. It dates back to 1885 and it is known today as his first masterpiece. Here is a picture of the painting:
After seeing this painting, I looked for an article relating to it and actually found one rather interesting. This article by an unidentified student from Princeton, who discusses the structure of the painting, the physical characteristics of the characters painted by Van Gogh, and the reasons why this painting was not accepted as a masterpiece in the early years of its creation.
According to the author, The Potato Eaters is an impressive work of art that today is rendered as one of Van Gogh’s masterpieces. However, back in 1885, critics saw the painting as too stiff and unrealistic, containing awkward looking people with deformed extremities. Again, the author’s main point is to explain why the critics in 1885 did not appreciate the painting and the reasons Van Gogh used the techniques he used.
At the time of its creation , people argued that the painting was too superficial. One critic was highly skeptical of the painting. “Why haven’t you studied their movement? They look so posed. That genteel hand of the woman in the back is completely unrealistic!”, he said. Many people argued that Van Gogh’s figured were not pretty; there was something off about them. They had strange, gawky features and looked awkward- not the type of people a potential buyer would want hung on his wall.
To debacle this argument, the author explains that Van Gogh purposely painted the work this way to portray the hardship and survival this family had to go through every day. Had he painted them correctly positioned and comfortable, this message could not have gone through. He conveyed the physical and mental wear and tear on the peasants in his paintings through slightly contorted anatomy: their strangely bent over bodies show the work load that was pressed upon them and thus weighed down their lives literally and figuratively.
I think the article does a wonderful job analyzing the physical aspects of the characters and refuting the statements made by the critics one hundred years ago. It clearly explains the reasons Van Gogh portrayed the characters the way he did. However, it fails to analyze the surroundings of the characters and the expressions of the characters themselves, which is something I would like to talk about.
To start off, even though the characters are awkward looking and this is purposely done to portray a sense of poverty and hard work, the expression on their faces are extremely vivid and allows the viewer to delve inside the characters minds. One can see the hardship and the sadness in these characters expressions.
Another important aspect is that this painting was created way before Van Gogh began extensive use of impressionism and other painting techniques, but the mixture of dark and lightness in the painting make it unique and adds to the sentiment of hardship and survival.
Something that the author fails to talk about is the array of detail in the surrounding areas of the painting and in the dinner table. Some of these include:
-The rafter boards in the back of the piece.
- The lines forming a window in the darkness.
- The picture frame hung on the wall.
- The large plate of potatoes, and the fingers stretched out to obtain them.
- The woman pouring something that looks like coffee.
- The torn and worn down edges of the table.
Now that I have explained to you some of the things that were absent in the author’s article, I think that you can gain a full understanding and appreciation of the painting “The Potato Eaters”. Hope you enjoyed the post, good day mates!
SOURCES
http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/potatoindex.html
http://blogs.princeton.edu/wri152-3/f05/michalak/conclusion.html
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