Still Life with Pottery, Beer Glass and Bottle

This dates to the autumn of 1884, when Van Gogh was living with his parents in Nuenen, a village in the Dutch south, and had taken on a few local pupils. He was teaching several amateurs from nearby Eindhoven to paint, and he thought still life was the place to start, so he set up pots, bottles and a beer glass and worked alongside them. It is a world away from the sunflowers and bright fields still four years off in Arles. Here the palette is all browns and earth, the sober Dutch manner he had grown up admiring. He was 31, largely self-taught, still teaching himself by arranging plain objects on a table.