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Beginning on 8 October 2021, the #vangoghmuseum is presenting the exhibition The Potato Eaters: Mistake or Masterpiece? – an ode to the work which #vincentvangogh painted in the Brabant village of Nuenen in 1885. Although the painting is now one of the highlights of the Van Gogh Museum's collection, it was by no means viewed that way by everyone at the time. The exhibition invites visitors to form their own opinion of what Van Gogh then viewed as the best work he produced so far.
First masterpiece...
Although he never explicitly used the word in his letters, Van Gogh only considered four of his paintings to be 'masterpieces': The Bedroom (1888), Sunflowers (1888) and Augustine Roulin (La berceuse) (1888–89), but also The Potato Eaters (1885), which he spent months preparing to paint. Having drawn and painted for several years by then, he viewed the canvas as his first 'masterwork' – a demonstration of his newly acquired skills. He hoped the challenging group composition would provide his entrée into the Paris art market. Van Gogh decided to depict a peasant meal, a popular theme at the time. In choosing it, he followed in the footsteps of role models and contemporaries including Joseph Israëls and Charles Degroux.
...or mistake?
Van Gogh wanted The Potato Eaters to be a symbol of honest, unidealized rural life – something that was not yet common in painting. The Potato Eaters: Mistake or Masterpiece offers an insight into the genesis of the painting and what Van Gogh hoped to achieve with it. For all his ambition, however, the success he hoped for failed to materialize: the painting was received critically by dealers, artists and his brother alike. The Potato Eaters never featured in an exhibition and ended up hanging unsold above the fireplace in Theo's apartment in Paris. All the same, Van Gogh did not admit defeat: he stuck to his career and continued to develop as an artist.
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