Basket of Potatoes

Van Gogh painted this in the autumn of 1885, in the Dutch village of Nuenen, only months after he finished The Potato Eaters, his dark scene of a peasant family at supper. He was still working in these heavy browns, years before the south of France brightened everything he touched. What he wanted from a basket of potatoes was weight. He wrote to his brother Theo that he wanted them to feel like lumps you could heft in your hand, solid enough that you would know it if one were thrown at you. To build the wickerwork of the basket he squeezed dots of yellow-green paint straight from the tube onto the canvas. He knew such pictures were hard to sell, and told Theo so plainly, but painting them was, in his own word, useful.