Sower with Basket

This is not a painting but a drawing, in charcoal and chalk, and it comes from the very beginning. In 1881, living with his parents at Etten, Van Gogh was still teaching himself how to draw a figure, and he did it the way many beginners did, by copying the masters. Here he copies a print of The Sower by Jean-Francois Millet, the French painter of peasant life he admired above all others. The bent back, the swinging arm, the seed thrown across the field are all Millet's invention, worked out by Van Gogh line by line to learn how a body carries weight and movement. The sower stayed with him for the rest of his short career, and nearly a decade later he painted his own sowers in full colour. It started here, in black chalk, before he had taken a single painting lesson.