Paysanne cousant

Van Gogh painted this in 1885 in Nuenen, the Dutch village where his father was the Protestant minister, during the two years he spent drawing and painting the local weavers and farm families. This was before Paris and before colour. He wanted to be a painter of peasant life in the plain, earthy manner of the older Dutch masters and of Millet, whom he revered. The woman bent over her sewing is one of dozens of such studies of country people at their work that led up to his first big canvas, The Potato Eaters, from the same spring. The palette is all browns and dull greens, the face barely lit, closer to the soil than to any studio.