Vincent van Gogh painted over eight hundred paintings in less than ten years. He lived from 1853-1890 only spending the last ten years of his life painting. Gogh’s most commonly used style was impasto, thickly used oil paints on stretched canvases allowing the movement, and texture to be visually seen. Each one of his pieces of work had a unique meaning behind it. People believe after his father 's death Gogh’s art talents were unbound due to his technique, and talents changing miraculously. He painted people he knew, things he had seen, and pieces of art that would reflect personal feelings, and emotions. It is important while admiring Gogh’s art to understand when and where he created it, the style he used, and why he choose to paint it.
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This painting was done through a period of a couple months April-may, 1885. Many people today would recognize this picture not by its name but by its context. This picture holds five peasants gathered around a table in a dark room eating nothing more than potatoes. There is a light coming from a lantern hanging above the table this allowed him to highlight the faces of four adults. “I like so much better to paint the eyes of people than to paint cathedrals,” Van Gogh wrote (Schapiro 8). Gogh painted his feelings and what he could personally relate to. There is a child with her back to the picture not allowing her face to be seen. “The dark silhouette of the girls back provides a center of gravity, and the tentatively painted steam from the potatoes creates a halo around her” (Benard 23). These peasants are circled around a table to share what they have grown in fields with their own hands. “It also expresses most strongly and fully his social and moral feelings. Curiously enough the clock stands still (now forever) at twenty-five to twelve. Added up they make thirty-seven, the age of his suicide and death” (Nagera 33). Gogh made use of what little money he had which left him with cheap materials, however, he still brought realism into the painting. His financial situation left him often painting things that art dealers in Paris at the time would find his work as unappealing. “He was a painter of peasants, not for the sake of their picturesqueness-although he was moved by their whole aspect-but from a deep affinity and solidarity with poor people, whose lives, like his own, were burdened with care” (Schapiro 8). Gogh had a relationship with the peasants in this painting and was able to give them all their own individuality through a painting. The Potato Eaters is an oil painted canvas that is 32 ¼ x
This painting was done through a period of a couple months April-may, 1885. Many people today would recognize this picture not by its name but by its context. This picture holds five peasants gathered around a table in a dark room eating nothing more than potatoes. There is a light coming from a lantern hanging above the table this allowed him to highlight the faces of four adults. “I like so much better to paint the eyes of people than to paint cathedrals,” Van Gogh wrote (Schapiro 8). Gogh painted his feelings and what he could personally relate to. There is a child with her back to the picture not allowing her face to be seen. “The dark silhouette of the girls back provides a center of gravity, and the tentatively painted steam from the potatoes creates a halo around her” (Benard 23). These peasants are circled around a table to share what they have grown in fields with their own hands. “It also expresses most strongly and fully his social and moral feelings. Curiously enough the clock stands still (now forever) at twenty-five to twelve. Added up they make thirty-seven, the age of his suicide and death” (Nagera 33). Gogh made use of what little money he had which left him with cheap materials, however, he still brought realism into the painting. His financial situation left him often painting things that art dealers in Paris at the time would find his work as unappealing. “He was a painter of peasants, not for the sake of their picturesqueness-although he was moved by their whole aspect-but from a deep affinity and solidarity with poor people, whose lives, like his own, were burdened with care” (Schapiro 8). Gogh had a relationship with the peasants in this painting and was able to give them all their own individuality through a painting. The Potato Eaters is an oil painted canvas that is 32 ¼ x