How many studies does it take to paint a masterpiece?
For Vincent, the answer was about 100.
After months of drawing faces, hands and figures, Vincent painted this full-scale version of ‘The Potato Eaters’. Think of it as the final rehearsal before the definitive painting. The composition is virtually identical, but the brushwork and layout still feel a little looser and more sketch-like.
1. ‘The Potato Eaters’, 1885 © Kröller-Müller Museum
2. ‘The Potato Eaters’, 1885 © Van Gogh Museum
He made a lithograph of it that spring. Van Rappard wrote back asking why the woman on the left had a nose like a pipe stem. Vincent sent the letter back, and their friendship never recovered.
The hands were the whole point. He told Theo at the end of April that the picture had to make clear those hands in the dish had dug the earth the potatoes came from — that it should speak of manual labour, and of food honestly earned. That is what all those months of hands were for. Two days later he walked out to the cottage and found the family eating by the light of the little window instead of under the lamp. The lamp was already his, not theirs.
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