Still Life with a Basket of Potatoes, Surrounded by Autumn Leaves and Vegetables

In the autumn of 1885 Van Gogh was living with his parents in Nuenen, in the Dutch countryside, and painting whatever the vicarage garden produced, cabbages, apples, and baskets of potatoes dug from the plots behind the house. He was drawn to plain, poor subjects, the food of the labourers he admired. He wrote to his brother Theo that he wanted to give the potatoes body, to make them feel like heavy, solid lumps you could weigh in your hand. To do it he worked almost entirely in shades of one earthy brown, testing how far a single colour could carry a picture. Within months he would leave the Netherlands for Antwerp and then Paris, where his palette turned bright.