Dependent on his brother Theo for financial support, Van Gogh thought of portrait painting as a potential opportunity to make a living as an artist.  For Van Gogh, art supplies were expensive, and he was often desperate for his brother to send him the just the money he needed to survive.  In a letter to his brother Theo from December of 1885, Vincent discussed painting portraits and how it could be a way for him to advance when writing, “I imagine portrait painting is the way to earn the means for greater things.”

Although some of his early portraits are lesser known, they were an important part of his development as an artist.  Later in December of 1885 Van Gogh wrote again to his brother Theo stating, “Today I have painted another head of a model, whom I could not pay however; but having the opportunity, I profited by it.”

View a video compilation of Van Gogh’s portraits below:

Letters Sources:

http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/16/438.htm

http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/16/441.htm

In April of 1885, Van Gogh was living in Nuenen and was working on The Potato Eaters when he wrote the following to his brother Theo,

“I want to tell you that I am working on the potato eaters, and I have painted new studies of the heads; the hands especially are greatly changed.

What I am trying to do most is to bring life into it.”

Later in the month he again wrote to his brother Theo about the painting stating,

“Though the actual painting will have been completed in a comparatively short time, and largely from memory, it has taken a whole winter of painting studies of heads and hands.”

Van Gogh experimented with color and was still learning painting techniques.  His goal was to not only improve as a painter, but in this work in particular to capture the true peasant life.  In the same letter he went on to say,

“The point is that I’ve tried to bring out the idea that these people eating potatoes by the light of their lamp have dug the earth with the self-same hands they are now putting into the dish, and it thus suggests manual labour and – a meal honestly earned.”

Today one of Van Gogh’s paintings of The Potato Eaters can be seen at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  The other painting of The Potato Eaters is located at the, Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, The Netherlands.

Find more information about The Potato Eaters.

View more of Van Gogh’s Potato Eater works below:

Letters Source:
http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/15/404.htm

http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/15/403.htm

“I wish you could walk here some evening in this splendid autumn wood. What I bring back from it this year will be just a scanty harvest. However, I hope to bring a few things, and in time it will grow more and more.”

Van Gogh also appreciated the beauty of harvest time and became wrapped up in nature and absorbing the changes taking place around him.  On September 19 of 1882, he wrote the following to his brother Theo,

“Sometimes I long for harvest time, that is, for the time when I shall be so imbued with the study of nature that I myself can create something in a picture.”

By the spring of 1883, Van Gogh was referring to his studies as the seeds from which he would grow great works.  He used this metaphor in a letter to his brother Theo when stating,

“Well, the main thing for me to do now is to see to it that the quality of the seed (namely the drawings themselves) improves; it may take more time, but if the harvest is better for it, I am satisfied – I always have my eye on that harvest.”

Van Gogh did master drawing and, it was this skill that in turn helped him to produce great paintings as well such as the ones below which he harvested only a few years later.

Letters Source:

http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/229.htm
http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/233.htm
http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/12/277.htm

Another reason that the shoe paintings still fascinate individuals today is that these works are also often interpreted as a study of Van Gogh’s life. In these paintings, he captures a pair or pairs of shoes on the floor most with laces untied as if they have just been taken off at the end of a long day. Unlike other still life subjects, the shoes have been to all the places and have seen all of the struggles of the owner. To many, Van Gogh’s shoes with the worn leather and tired soles represent the rough life of the artist himself and the weathered journey he has endured.

In a letter to his brother Theo from August 29, 1888, Van Gogh wrote about a still life and one of the shoe paintings when stating,

“I have heaps of ideas for my work, and if I go on with figure painting very industriously, I may possibly find more. But what’s the use? Sometimes I feel too feeble to fight against existing circumstances, and I should have to be cleverer and richer and younger to win.

Fortunately for me, I do not hanker after victory any more, and all that I seek in painting is a way to make life bearable.”

Today Van Gogh’s shoe paintings can be seen in several different museums including The Van Gogh Museum, Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, The Baltimore Museum of Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. There is also one in a private collection.

View Van Gogh’s shoe paintings below, and comment and share your thoughts on these works.

Letter Source:

http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/18/529.htm

Possibly his most famous work to show this style is Almond Blossom, 1890. However, there were several other works that he created that were directly after Japanese artists including Utagawa Hiroshige and Keisaï Eisen. These works include Japonaiserie: Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige), Japonaiserie: Flowering Plum Tree (after Hiroshige), and Japonaiserie: Oiran (after Keisaï Eisen) all shown below.

In a letter to his brother Theo from September 8, 1888 Van Gogh wrote about another famous Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, known for his print The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and how he admired his work “Hokusai wrings the same cry from you, but he does it by his line, his drawing; as you say in your letter – the waves are claws and the ship is caught in them, you feel it.”

Then on September 24, 1888 Van Gogh wrote again to his brother on the topic of Japanese art, “And one cannot study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming merrier and happier, and we should turn back to nature in spite of our education and our work in a conventional world.”

Learn more about Japonisme and Van Gogh.

Letters Source:

http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/18/533.htm

http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/18/542.htm