Potato Eater: Vincent Van Gogh

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Potato Eater was one of Vincent van Gogh early canvas and is considered to be his first masterpiece. Painted while living among the peasants and laborers in Nuenen in the Netherlands, Van Gogh wanted to depict the people and their lives truthfully (Vincent van Gogh-The Art Story). As he discovered impressionism, Van Gogh saw himself as a painter of peasant life. Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo saying,” By continually observing peasant life, at all hours of the day… I have become so involved in it that I rarely think of anything else” (The Guardian). Potato Eaters was created during the Dutch Golden Age. Dutch Golden Age was a period in Dutch history that encompasses most of the seventeenth century which was the prosperity in Dutch trade, science, military, and art (History of Dutch Golden Age). The impressionism was one of the most important …show more content…
Even though the golden age brought prosperity to the nation ,but not all areas of Europe benefit. As mentioned early in the Merry Family we saw that the golden Age introduced a class of people known as the middle-class and when this occurred it resulted in the lower class becoming peasants. Also, economic growth was very fast during until about 1620 when it slowed but continued to grow steadily until the end of the Golden Age (The Dutch Economy in the Golden Age). The last decades of the seventeenth century were marked by declining production and loss of market dominance overseas (The Dutch Economy in the Golden Age). The Potato Eaters reflect post-impressionist artwork because the artist was painting because of what he saw around him and he wanted his painting to truthfully portray the hardships that many peasant families had to endure and he wanted to express his emotional and personal response

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