Vincent van Gogh | Paintings of peasants

Van Gogh had a particular attachment and sympathy for peasants and other working class people that was fueled in several ways.

He was particularly fond of the peasant genre work of Jean-François Millet and others.

He found the subjects noble and important in the development of modern art.

Van Gogh had seen the changing landscape in the Netherlands as industrialization encroached on once pastoral settings and the livelihoods of the working poor with little opportunity to change vocation.

Van Gogh had a particular interest in creating character studies of working men and women in the Netherlands and Belgium, such as farmers, weavers, and fishermen.

Making up a large body of Van Gogh's work during this period, the character studies were an important, foundational component in his artistic development.

Peasant genre

The "peasant genre" of the Realism movement began in the 1840s with the works of Jean-François Millet, Jules Breton and others.

Van Gogh described the works of Millet and Breton as having religious significance, "something on high," and described them as being the "voices of the wheat".

The Van Gogh Museum says of Millet's influence on Van Gogh:

"Millet's paintings, with their unprecedented depictions of peasants and their labors, mark a turning point in 19th-century art.

Before Millet, peasant figures were just one of many elements in picturesque or nostalgic scenes.

In Millet's work, individual men and women became heroic and real.

Millet was the only major artist of the Barbizon School who was not interested in 'pure' landscape painting".

Peasant character studies

In November 1882, Van Gogh began drawings of individuals to depict a range of character types from the working class.

He aimed to be a "peasant painter", conveying deep feeling realistically, with objectivity.

To depict the essence of the life of the peasant and their spirit, Van Gogh lived as they lived, he was in the fields as they were, enduring the weather for long hours as they were.

To do so was not something taught in schools, he noted, and became frustrated by traditionalists who focused on technique more so than the nature of the people being captured.

So thoroughly was he engaged in living the peasant lifestyle, his appearance and manner of speech began to separate himself from others, but this was a cost he believed he needed to bear for his artistic development.

Of getting along better with "poor and common folk" than cultured society, Van Gogh wrote in 1882, "after all, it's right and proper that I should live like an artist in the surroundings I'm sensitive to and am trying to express". | Source: © Wikipedia

Nel novembre 1882 Van Gogh cominciò a realizzare dei disegni di individui per descrivere una serie di personaggi della classe operaia.

Egli amava essere il "pittore dei contadini", per trasmettere un sentimento profondo di realismo, con obiettività.

Per rappresentare l'essenza della vita dei contadini e il loro spirito, van Gogh visse come uno di loro, andando nei campi, sopportando come loro le intemperie per lunghe ore.

Ciò non era qualcosa imparata a scuola, ma la sua diretta osservazione, e fu frustrato dai tradizionalisti che si concentravano sulla tecnica più che sulla cattura della natura delle persone.

Con l'essere così a fondo impegnato a vivere la vita contadina, il suo aspetto ed il modo di parlare cominciarono a separarlo dagli altri, ma questo era un costo che credeva dovesse pagare al suo sviluppo artistico.

Dell'andare d'accordo meglio con la "gente povera e comune" che con la società colta, Van Gogh scrisse nel 1882: "dopo tutto, è giusto e corretto che dovevo vivere come un artista nel loro ambiente e sono sensibile verso ciò che sto cercando di esprimere".