The Potato Eaters
1885 · Oil on canvas · Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
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About this work
- Artist
- Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
- Year
- 1885
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 82 × 114 cm
- Collection
- Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
- Movement
- Post-Impressionism
Five peasants sit around a table under a single oil lamp in a dark cottage, sharing a dish of potatoes and pouring coffee, their faces and knuckled hands painted in the colour of a dusty potato. Van Gogh made the picture in Nuenen in April and May 1885 after months of studies of the heads and hands of the De Groot family, and he meant it as his first real painting, a statement that these people had earned their food with the same hands they put in the dish. The dark palette, the coarse handling and the deliberately ugly faces were criticised by his friend Van Rappard, and the two never spoke again. The painting went to his brother Theo in Paris and is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the summit of his Dutch years.
This exhibition-poster edition shows the whole work beneath original typography set in-house. The original is in the public domain.
Where it works
Five peasants around a lamplit table in deep browns, greens and a single yellow flame, for a kitchen, dining room or study at 24×36 in natural wood. Olive, deep brown or warm grey walls suit the gloom; pair it with At Eternity's Gate.
Style, size & framing detail
- Style
- Exhibition poster of a Post-Impressionism painting
- Era
- 19th century (1885)
- Orientation
- Portrait
- Palette
- cream & beige
- Mood
- classic
- Rooms
- kitchen, dining room, study or library, living room, dorm room
- Good gift for
- housewarming, art lovers
Size. We'd hang this one at 24×36. Prints at 12×18, 16×24, 24×36 in — 12×18 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 16×24 above a desk, console or in a hallway; 24×36 as the statement piece above a sofa or bed.
Framing. Exhibition posters sit best in a slim black frame with no mat — the typeset margin is the mat.
Pairing. Pairs as a set of three with other famous painting prints (10% off three or more).
Details & materials
Shipping & returns
Is this the whole painting, or a crop?
Is The Potato Eaters in the public domain?
What is it printed on?
When was The Potato Eaters painted, and in what medium?
What size works above a sofa or bed?
About this design
The Madten promise
A fine-art print
The same artwork as a clean fine-art print — the image shown large with a minimal caption.
