Nuenen, 1883–1885

Weavers at the loom, peasant heads and the potato eaters: earth tones, thick shadow, almost no colour.

Two years in his parents' village in Brabant, painting weavers at their looms and the heads of the people who worked the land. The palette is earth: bitumen, brown, a green that reads almost black. He wanted the pictures to look like the colour of a dusty potato, and said so. The Potato Eaters comes out of this stretch and is the summary of it.