Camponesa remendando meias

In 1885 van Gogh was living in the Dutch village of Nuenen, where his father was the Protestant minister, and he spent that winter and spring painting the local weavers and farm labourers. He made study after study of them at ordinary work, eating, sewing, digging, in the heavy browns of the countryside. This one shows a woman darning stockings, exactly the kind of unglamorous task he wanted in his pictures. He was building toward a big group scene of a peasant family at supper, which he finished that May as The Potato Eaters. He believed a painting of the poor should smell of bacon, smoke and steaming potatoes rather than of perfume.