Van Gogh said he wanted to depict peasants as ‘they really were’. He deliberately chose coarse and unattractive models, believing they would be natural and unspoiled in his finished work.
It shows five people eating potatoes around a dinner table. The painting is quite dark, which contrast with many of van Gogh’s later brighter works.
No one in the painting has a happy expression on his face or her faces, and they look thin and bony. Their clothes are ragged and dirty; generally, they look like friends or family that has been working hard all day.
The Potato Eaters by Van Gogh
