Garnwinde

Five years before the sunflowers and the bright southern light, Vincent van Gogh was living with his parents in Nuenen, a village in the Dutch province of Brabant, painting the local poor in browns and greys so dark the figures nearly vanish. Weaving was the old trade there, and it was dying as machines took over. Van Gogh drew and painted the weavers again and again in their cramped cottages, calling them exceptionally poor folk. This small study shows a woman winding spun yarn onto a bobbin, the thread picked out by a few pale touches of grey. He made it early in 1885, the same spring he finished The Potato Eaters, the dark peasant picture he then thought was the best thing he had done.