In what year did Van Gogh paint The Potato Eaters? He painted it in 1885. The work was created in Nuenen, the rural Dutch town where Vincent van Gogh lived with his parents, and it became his first major composition featuring a group of figures around a table.
Van Gogh worked on studies during March and early April, then painted the main canvas from 13 April until the beginning of May. Its dark, earthy palette and rough, expressive faces were deliberate: he wanted the scene to convey the dignity of rural labor and the sense that the family had honestly earned its food by working the land. The five figures are shown eating potatoes by lamplight, emphasizing the humble setting.
The year is sometimes confused with 1884, when Van Gogh was already developing peasant subjects and studying related compositions. It is also easy to associate the painting with his later, brighter Arles period, but The Potato Eaters predates that transformation by several years. The original oil-on-canvas painting is now in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, while studies and a lithograph survive elsewhere.