Cottage with a Peasant Coming Home
Vincent van Gogh (1853 to 1890) · 1885
A thatched cottage sits under a heavy evening sky, its roof sagging like the back of an old animal, and a single figure walks toward the door along a muddy path. This is the Dutch countryside near Nuenen in the province of Brabant, where Van Gogh lived with his parents from 1883 to 1885 and painted the peasants and their homes in dark earth colours. He called these cottages human nests, and he painted dozens of them in the months around The Potato Eaters, his first major work. The Museo Soumaya's painting is one of the few Van Goghs in Latin America and one of the most sombre.
Look at the palette. There is almost no bright colour: browns, dark greens, greys and a muddy yellow in the sky, laid on thickly with a loaded brush. The cottage is painted with real affection, the thatch built up in long strokes and the walls in short dabs. The peasant is a few marks of dark paint, bent forward, part of the landscape rather than a portrait. The sky is the most worked part of the picture, with clouds piled up in swirling strokes that hint at the turbulent skies of his later years in the south of France. The picture is small and intimate, meant to be seen close.
Van Gogh left Nuenen in late 1885 for Antwerp and then Paris, where his colours would change completely under the influence of the Impressionists. This canvas shows him just before that transformation, still committed to the dark realism of Millet and the Hague School and to the idea that painting should honour the labour of ordinary people. It matters as an early, honest work by an artist who is otherwise known for sunflowers and starry nights. The memorable detail is the light in the cottage window, the only warm note in the picture, toward which the peasant is walking home.
Did You Know? Van Gogh called the thatched cottages of Brabant human nests and painted dozens of them in 1885.
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