“Peasant and Peasant Woman Planting Potatoes,” an artwork executed in 1885 by Vincent van Gogh in Nuenen, Netherlands, is an oil painting on canvas that exemplifies the Realism art movement and falls under the genre of genre painting. This masterpiece is currently housed at the Kunsthaus Zürich in Zürich, Switzerland.
The artwork depicts two peasants, a man and a woman, engaged in the laborious task of planting potatoes. They are portrayed in a bent posture, diligently working the soil. The color palette predominantly consists of earthy tones and muted hues, highlighting the rustic and somber reality of peasant life. The background features an expanse of open field under a sky with diffuse light, emphasizing the simplicity and harshness of rural existence. The depiction of the figures and their environment is rendered with an expressive brushwork, which imparts a sense of movement and raw emotion, characteristic of Van Gogh’s early works.
