Zwei grabende Bauern

Van Gogh made this in October 1889, from a room in the asylum at Saint-Rémy where he had committed himself after the breakdown in Arles. Unable to go out and find subjects during the worst stretches, he turned to prints his brother Theo mailed him, black-and-white reproductions of Millet, the painter of peasants he had loved since his twenties. He copied the two digging figures but insisted it was not really copying. He compared himself to a musician playing another man's score, translating Millet's greys into his own charged blues and yellows and rapid, ploughing strokes. Millet had handed him the composition. The heat and pressure of the paint are entirely Van Gogh's, made in a place he could rarely leave.