Peasant Family at the Table

The evening meal in a labourer's cottage was one of the most painted subjects in Europe in the 1880s, and in the Netherlands it was Israels who made it famous. He returned to it again and again, and this large canvas of 1882 is one of those variations. At the time he was among the most celebrated painters in the country, and his peasants are shown with dignity and soft light rather than hardship. Van Gogh had admired him since 1874, when he listed Israels among the painters he liked very much indeed. He saw this exact painting at the Goupil gallery in The Hague, and three years later, in Nuenen, he set out to do the same subject his own way. The result was The Potato Eaters of 1885, which he wanted raw, a real peasant painting in his words. This canvas by Israels meanwhile went on travelling: to the young avant-garde group Les XX in Brussels for three years running, and in 1887 to Brooklyn, in the collection of the New York banker George Seney.