Weaver Arranging Threads

In the winter of 1883 and into 1884, Van Gogh settled in the Brabant village of Nuenen and kept visiting the cottages of its linen weavers, watching them work at home on their big wooden looms. He came at a moment when this was already a fading trade. Steam-powered mills in the towns were taking work that these families had done by hand for generations, and a hand-weaver in a small room was becoming a rare sight. That rareness was part of what drew him. He wrote that he wanted to show the weaver standing away from the loom, arranging the threads for the cloth, and that is the moment caught here. The loom fills most of the space, a dark tangle of beams and frame that nearly boxes the man in. He painted the wood in heavy browns and greys, the palette he kept through these Dutch years before Paris. He made around 30 studies of the weavers of Nuenen, in drawing and in paint, more than almost any artist of his time gave the subject.