Still Life: Potatoes in a Yellow Dish

By March 1888 Van Gogh had left Paris for Arles in the south, on his own, away from the other painters, wanting to work out a style that was entirely his. He began with something humble and familiar: a dish of potatoes. He had drawn and painted potatoes and the people who ate them years earlier in Holland, so the subject held no mystery, which was exactly the point. It let him concentrate on the paint itself. The brown of the potatoes carries hidden touches of red and blue, the yellow bowl throws a blue shadow onto the white cloth, and the background is worked in crossing strokes that look woven, a handling sometimes called his basket-weaver manner. He used this quiet still life as a warm-up, a chance to test his new ideas on a motif he already knew by heart.