Paysanne bêchant

In 1885 Van Gogh was living with his parents in the Brabant village of Nuenen and had set himself a stubborn task: to paint peasants honestly, at their labour, and to catch their character. He made dozens of these studies of local farm workers digging, stooping and gleaning, in a heavy palette of browns and greys, the same dark register that produced The Potato Eaters that spring. This woman bends into her spade, her body reduced to a few blunt, blocky shapes. He did not want them pretty. He wanted the weight of the work to show in the way they stood. One of the villagers who modelled for him in these months was a young woman named Gordina de Groot, whose family sat for the famous potato-eating supper.