Weaver at the Loom

In 1884 Van Gogh was living with his parents in the Dutch village of Nuenen, years before the bright colour most people picture, and he spent about six months among the local handloom weavers. Weaving was old work in Nuenen and already dying, undercut by the mechanical looms of the factories, and the men who still did it were, in his own words, exceptionally poor. He painted this one hemmed inside his huge wooden loom, the dark frame filling most of the canvas and nearly swallowing the worker at its centre. The palette is all browns and muted blues, the colour of a dim cottage interior. Van Gogh thought there was something meditative in the weaver's concentration, and he studied the machinery closely enough that you can read how it was built.