The Potato Eaters
painting by Vincent van Gogh
The Potato Eaters (Dutch: De Aardappeleters) is an oil painting by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh painted in April to May of 1885 in Nuenen, Netherlands.
It is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The original oil sketch is at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. He also made lithographs of the image, which are held in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The painting is considered to be one of Van Gogh's masterpieces.
Composition
During March and the beginning of April 1885, Van Gogh sketched studies for the painting and corresponded with his brother Theo, who was not impressed with his current work nor the sketches Van Gogh sent him in Paris. He began working on The Potato Eaters while living with his parents in Nuenen, a rural town which was home to many farmers, labourers and weavers. He worked on the painting from 13 April until the beginning of May, when it was mostly done except for minor changes that he made with a small brush later the same year.
Van Gogh discussed The Potato Eaters in a letter to his brother. He said that he wanted people who see it to:…get the idea that these folk, who are eating their potatoes by the light of their little lamp, have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labour and–that they have thus honestly earned their food.
The public source identifies “The Potato Eaters” as painting by Vincent van Gogh. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Potato, Eaters and painting.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q154469. VIAF identifies the subject as 184003607. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1885.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Potato Eaters” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.