Peasants Lifting Potatoes

Van Gogh made this in the early months of 1890, shut inside the asylum at Saint-Remy where he had committed himself the year before. Through the worst stretches he could not go out to paint, so his brother Theo sent prints of Jean-Francois Millet, the painter of solemn peasant labour Vincent had revered since his 20s, and Vincent set about copying them. He called these works translations rather than copies. From Millet's black-and-white print he reimagined these two figures digging potatoes in his own restless colour and thick, curling strokes. He left Saint-Remy that May for the village of Auvers, north of Paris, and was dead by the end of July.