1885, the fullest of the Nuenen years

The record dates Basket of Potatoes to 1885, the last year of the first period in this catalogue's chronology and much the largest of the three: seventy works carry it, against nine for 1883 and twenty-five for 1884.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 44.5 by 60 centimetres and is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The measured palette reads as brown, which is the return for thirty-one of the seventy works dated 1885 — the largest count for that family in any single year here.

The potato as a catalogue entry

Thirteen titles in this catalogue name potatoes, and eleven of the thirteen are dated 1885. The remaining two are dated 1888 and 1890, at the far end of the decade. Four titles name the potato eaters specifically, all four in 1885: the finished picture, a preliminary oil sketch, a study of four peasants at a meal and a study of a single head. Read as a group they show a subject being worked at four times rather than arriving once, which is a difference a catalogue can register and a single reproduction cannot. This entry belongs to that year and that subject; the record connects it to nothing further, and nor does this page.