Capanna con un contadino che torna a casa

Van Gogh painted this in the summer of 1885 in Nuenen, the Dutch village where his father was the Protestant pastor. He was still years away from the blazing colour of the south of France. Here everything is dug from the same dark earth: brown walls, mossy thatch, a heavy sky. A labourer trudges home toward the cottage with a spade over his shoulder at the close of the day. This was exactly the world Vincent wanted to paint then. That same spring he had finished The Potato Eaters, his big picture of peasants at supper, and he believed that honest country life, painted in the colour of soil, was the truest subject an artist could have. A few months later he moved to the city, and the mud slowly began to lift from his palette.