RUSTIC LIFE AND

THE WORKING CLASS

I’ve become so absorbed in peasant life by continually seeing it all hours of

the day that I really hardly think of anything else. Van Gogh

Van Gogh’s innate sympathy for peasants and laborers was rooted in
the Christian values promoted by his clergyman father. To the artist,
agricultural workers, who lived close to nature, were ennobled by their
uncorrupted innocence and earnest dedication to hard work. Van Gogh
remained ever sensitive to the plight of the economically disadvantaged
throughout his brief career, whether in views of urban life or depictions
of inhabitants of the smaller towns and rural areas of the Netherlands
and France.

Van Gogh drew inspiration from artists associated

with the following movements:

The Barbizon School Artists who worked in and around the

Forest of Fontainebleau south of Paris, painting peasants, farm
animals, and the surrounding countryside.

The Hague School A group of painters from Van Gogh’s native

Holland who depicted villagers and fisherfolk in the rural and
coastal areas around the capital city of the Netherlands.

Realist Painters of peasants and laborers in styles ranging from

blunt views of urban poverty to evocotive depictions of rural
workers posed against picturesque landscapes.
Vincent van Gogh, Head of a Peasant Woman, about 1884
Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John J. Emery

Diggers, sowers, plowers, men and women

I must now draw constantly. Examine and draw
everything that’s part of a peasant’s life. VG

This study is one of dozens that led to Van Gogh’s first major
painting, The Potato Eaters. The series was painted in Nuenen,
a village where Van Gogh was staying with his parents. The woman,
painted in a somber black, gray, and brown palette, wears the simple
head scarf traditionally worn while working in the fields.

Van Gogh aspired to rival the art of Jean-François Millet and

Jules Breton, leading chroniclers of the peasantry and rural life in
France. Idealizing and ennobling their rustic subjects, these artists,
whose paintings hang on the adjacent wall to the left, emphasize
the unspoiled innocence of agrarian workers, who live next to
nature and are thus, the artists believed, close to God.

His decision to become an artist was made only three years

before this was painted. Largely self-taught, he received
guidance from the artist Anton Mauve, a cousin who was a
member of the Hague School, a nineteenth-century group
of Dutch realists who painted rural themes in dark, earth-
toned colors, as seen here. A painting by Mauve hangs nearby.
Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field, 1888
Honolulu Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. Richard A. Cooke and Family
in memory of Richard A. Cooke, 1946

I’ve had a week of concentrated hard work in the

wheatfields right out in the sun, the result was
some studies of wheatfields, landscapes
and a sketch of a sower. VG

In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent described a group of paintings

completed in June 1888 that includes Wheat Field. Van Gogh’s
move to the town of Arles in southern France—to escape from the
cold weather, the hectic pace, and the bickering among artists—had
a positive effect on his temperament and art.

Van Gogh arrived in Arles in February while there was still snow
on the ground. Wheat Field, completed four months later, is a virtual
celebration of summer, picturing an abundant crop of golden grain
and evidence of harvesting in the form of the sheaves of wheat in
the foreground.

The short, staccato brushstrokes representing the stubble of harvested

grain in the foreground contrast with the longer, parallel strokes
of wheat stalks behind, and the curved, smudged strokes representing
clouds. The optimistic mood is reinforced by the complementary colors
—yellow and gold against blue and violet. In 1884, Vincent wrote:
“But if the summer is the opposition of blues against an element of
orange in the golden bronze of the wheat, this way one could paint
a painting . . . that really expressed the mood of the seasons.”

Even without figures, the harvested sheaves indicate the human labor
that went into the cultivated land. The landscape thus represents the
Vincent’s continued commitment to painting of peasant life. Look
at works by other painters of rustic life in this gallery, all admired
by Van Gogh, who depict views of various regions of rural France.
They range in style from smoothly brushed realism to the more spon-
taneous techniques of Impressionism, with looser brushwork and
open-air color. The works, including Vincent’s, share a sense of the
harmony of man and nature.
Jules Bastien-Lepage, The Ripened Wheat, 1884
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Museum purchase with funds provided by Suzette
and Eugene Davidson and the Davidson Endowment

Bastien-Lepage’s paintings combine the precision of

academic art with the light-filled palette of Impressionism.
Bands of color formed by the golden wheat field, green
farmland, and grey sky create a tiered background. These
emphasize the vast extent of work for the stooped farmer
using a cradle scythe to collect grain bundles.

Growing up in a farming village, Bastien-Lepage brought

first-hand experience to his to his paintings of peasant life.
This made him a model for Van Gogh, who strove to com-
municate the honorable but harsh life of country people.

In addition to finding success with his depictions of rural

life, Bastien-Lepage painted portraits, winning a prize for his
portrait of French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Like Van Gogh,
his career was cut short, and he died in his mid-thirties,
probably of kidney disease. Ripened Wheat was painted in
the last year of his life.

Jean-François Raffaëlli, The Return of the Ragpickers, 1879

Collection of Raj and Grace Dhawan

I’m so fond of Lhermitte—Raffaëlli—

because it’s thought out through and through,
sensible and honest. VG
Jozef Israëls, Peeling Apples by the Window, date unknown
Collection of Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh

When I was last in The Hague I heard things

Israëls had said about starting with a deep
color scheme, thus making even relatively
dark color seem light. In short, to express
light by opposing it to black. VG

A woman performing domestic chores was a frequent theme

of Dutch painting in the seventeenth century, often as an
emblem of virtue. Two hundred years later, Israëls presents
his young woman peeling apples in a humble interior. The
illumination of her face and task with natural light streaming
in from the window suggests her rectitude.

At Goupil, the art dealership where Van Gogh worked,

he saw the paintings and prints of Israëls and probably
met him. Israëls was one of a group of artists known as the
Hague School who used subdued, earth-toned colors to
portray moody images in suffused light. Like the French
Barbizon artists, the Dutch painters of the Hague School
focused on the peasants and landscape of the countryside
and on painting out-of-doors.

Israëls found commercial success; his painting of a family

having a meal around a table in a somber interior inspired
Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters (see print in Religion section).
Jules Breton, Brittany Girl (Young Woman Spinning), 1872
Denison Museum, Denison University

Shortly after Van Gogh made the decision to become an

artist, he traveled to Courrières, a town in the province
of Brittany. It was the childhood home of Jules Breton,
acclaimed painter of peasants from this region of western
France. Van Gogh had met Breton years earlier while
working as an art dealer, but he was too timid to knock
on the door of his studio in Courrières and left without
seeing him.

More than any other artists, Van Gogh sought to emulate

Jean-François Millet and Jules Breton, painters of the
people who depicted their humble, rustic subjects with
monumental dignity and emphasized the purity of spirit
of these workers who lived closed to nature and were, in
the artists’ eyes, blessed by God.

In his day, Breton often received more praise from critics

than Millet, likely because of Breton’s more conventional
style, which uses smoother brushwork and greater detail.
He also idealized his figures, as in this example of a beautiful
young peasant woman in a graceful pose, surrounded by
a scenic landscape.

Jules Breton, The Return from the Fields, 1867

Courtesy of Karen and Glenn Doshay

Dark silhouettes against a sky in which the sun is

setting, red . . . In my opinion, up to Millet and
Jules Breton there was . . . always progress;
but to surpass these two—don’t even talk about it.
Their genius may have been equaled in the past,
may be equaled now or in the future
but it is impossible to surpass it. VG
Jean François Millet, The Sower, after 1850
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, 19th Century or Earlier Painting Purchase Fund and
with funds provided by Mr. and Mrs. Samuel B. Casey and Mr. and Mrs. George L. Craig, Jr.

In Millet’s Sower . . . there is more soul

than in an ordinary sower in the field.
VG

The Sower is one of Millet’s best-known paintings. This

is the second version of the original painting (Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston). The active worker heroically striding
across the horizon has a secondary meaning: Christ’s
parable of the sower, who symbolically casts seeds that
will either grow (representing those who heed the word
of God) or fail (indicating denial of salvation). The son
of a pastor, Vincent would have been receptive to the
painting’s religious subtext.

Millet was mentioned in Van Gogh’s correspondence

more than any other painter and Vincent made copies
of and variations on the theme of Millet’s The Sower
through the years. Many are drawings, but the best-
known is a brilliantly colored painting completed in
southern France during his stay in Arles.

Van Gogh wrote, “I am still enchanted by snatches

from the past . . . [and] have a hankering after the eternal,
of which the sower and the sheaf of corn are symbols.”
Jean François Millet, Maternity: A Young Mother Cradling Her Baby,
1870–73
Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio, Bequest of Charles Phelps Taft and Anna Sinton Taft

Jean-François Millet was the best-known among the

painters who depicted rustic life around the town of
Barbizon, located south of Paris near the Forest of
Fontainebleau.

Millet painted peasants with reverence and admiration for

their humility and virtue. The mother-and-child imagery
in this painting suggests a modern Madonna and Child,
in keeping with the Biblical references often attributed to
Millet’s paintings.

Based on a biography of the artist published in 1881,

Van Gogh believed that Millet was born a peasant himself
and lived in poverty among the subjects he painted. In
truth, Millet had a comfortable upbringing and enjoyed
commercial success as an artist. A copy of the biography,
written by Alfred Sensier, is in a case nearby.

Jozef Israëls, Women in Landscape, date unknown

Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Gift of Sanford and Mary Jane Bloom

Israëls was called “the Dutch Millet” due to his compas-

sionate depictions of rural figures laboring in farms, fields,
and seacoasts.

Treated in a reverential manner like Millet’s treatments

of French peasants, Israëls presents a lone woman trudging
through a desolate stretch of land, a bundle carried on
her back. Breaking light on the horizon against her dark
silhouette suggests a divine presence contrasting with her
earthly struggles.

Van Gogh wrote of his admiration for Israëls along with

Millet and Rembrandt, all three “guided by the conscience
that’s called sentiment; their soul.”
Jean-François Raffaëlli, The Absinthe Drinkers, 1881
Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Museum Purchase, Roscoe and Margaret Oakes Income Fund,
Jay D. and Clare C. McEvoy Endowment Fund, Unrestricted Art Acquisition Endowment Income
Fund, Grover A. Magnin Bequest Fund, and the Yvonne Cappeller Trust

In the Salon there’s a very fine painting by

Raffaëlli, two absinthe drinkers, I find him
strongest when he paints these people who
have come down in the world . . . VG

This painting caused a stir because it portrayed men

suffering from the devastating effects of addiction to
absinthe, a popular but allegedly toxic, green-colored
liqueur suspected of causing hallucinations and attacking
the central nervous system.

Raffaëlli exhibited with the Impressionists, but unlike the

latter’s focus on the modern life of the upper middle class,
he depicted workers, peasants, and homeless figures in a style
that, in his mind, approached scientific documentation.

Van Gogh respected Raffaëlli for his skill in painting the

poor and marginalized. He wrote of his work: “Seemingly
there’s nothing simpler than painting peasants or rag pickers
and other laborers but—no subjects in painting are as difficult
as those everyday figures!” Theo van Gogh displayed Raffaëlli’s
work in his gallery and organized an exhibition of his paintings.

Jean-François Raffaëlli, An Old Woman Seated in Breton Dress, about 1890

Collection of Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh

In Raffaëlli’s words I find his opinion about

‘character’; what he says about this is good
and to the point, and it is illustrated
in drawings themselves. VG
Paul Sérusier, Landscape at Le Pouldu, 1890,
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Gift of Alice C. Simkins
in memory of Alice Nicholson Hanszan

In 1888, Sérusier joined a group of artists who painted in

Pont-Aven and Pouldu, two picturesque villages in Brittany.
Gathered around Paul Gauguin, they became known as the
Pont-Aven School. They aspired to go beyond both academic
art and Impressionism.

This painting demonstrates the techniques of the Pont-Aven

artists: bold use of pure color, the absence of perspective and
shading, geometrical composition devoid of unnecessary
detail, and a focus on the rural life and costumes of Breton
peasants.

Van Gogh was aware of the Pont-Aven artists and familiar

with the work of Paul Gauguin who shared Sérusier’s Pont-
Aven techniques and interest in depicting peasants working
and at their leisure in the countryside.

Georges Michel, The Approaching Storm, about 1840

Collection of The Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh Foundation

A precursor of the landscape painters of the Barbizon

School, Michel worked out of doors and painted rural
areas surrounding Paris. As an artist active in the
Romantic period of French art, he often employed his
mastery of atmospheric effects to enhance the inherent
drama in depictions of unsettled, windswept skies and
stormy weather.

Michel worked as a restorer of Netherlandish art in the

Louvre and was inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch
landscape masters. This no doubt contributed in some
measure to the admiration for his skill expressed by both
Vincent and Theo van Gogh.
Anton Mauve, Carting the Log, date unknown
Collection of Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh

When I went to see M[auve] my heart was

beating rather hard . . . And well . . .
he instructed and encouraged me in
all manner of kind and practical ways. VG

Mauve was a member of the Hague School, Dutch realist

painters who depicted peasants working in the fields or in
the forest, and fishermen’s families, often in somber earth
tones. Lyrical paintings like this one were very popular and
made Mauve one of the most successful and highly regarded
artists of his day.

Mauve, who was married to Van Gogh’s cousin, was a major

influence on Van Gogh. Vincent revered him and mentioned
him in over 150 letters to his brother Theo, and others.
In 1881, soon after his commitment to becoming an artist,
Vincent traveled to The Hague to seek out Mauve, who
provided him with valuable guidance during his formative
period.

Charles Émile Jacque, The Return Home, date unknown

Collection of Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh

A leading painter of the Barbizon School, Jacque specialized

in paintings of farm animals as well as landscapes. He was
called the “Raphael of sheep” and often, as in this example, he
painted flocks entering or leaving barns tended by a shepherd.

On Jacque and the generation of painters he represented,

Van Gogh wrote: “You know, whatever becomes of sacrosanct
Impressionism, I’d still myself have the wish to do the
things that the previous generation . . . [including] Jacque . . .
could understand.”
Léon Augustin Lhermitte, A Weaver from Béarn, 1895
Collection of Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh

[Lhermitte’s] a master of the figure . . .

There’s something astonishingly masterly in
everything he does—in modeling,
above all things, he utterly satisfies
the demands of honesty. VG

Weaving was a cottage industry in nineteenth-century

Europe. This French weaver is depicted operating a loom
in her small dwelling, where workers typically toiled so
hard, they barely had time even to sleep. Lhermitte’s
weaver appears trapped in the structure of her cage-like
loom. The novelist George Eliot wrote about the dreary
life of a lonely linen weaver in England in Silas Marner,
an early edition of which is in the case of books behind
you in this gallery.

In 1883–84, after moving in with his parents in the rural

town Nuenen, Van Gogh produced numerous drawings and
paintings of weavers in compositions like those of Lhermitte.

Auguste Rodin, Study for Balzac Nude, 1892

Columbus Museum of Art, Gift of Philip V. Oppenheimer

This figure of the revered French novelist Balzac was

a study by Rodin for a monument commissioned by a
French literary society. The final Monument to Balzac
shows the writer in a floor-length robe.

Van Gogh admired the breadth of Balzac’s novels, consid-

ered foundational in the development of realism in French
and British literature. The author aimed to represent all
levels of French society in his fictional universe. Van Gogh
called Balzac a “great and powerful artist” and read his com-
plete works more than once.