The De Groot-van Rooij family served as the model for ‘The Potato Eaters’. Van Gogh made his drawings and oil sketches in the family’s home. It was not his intention to achieve exact likenesses of the family. He wanted to represent the atmosphere and the harsh, primitive nature of peasant life.Or as he later wrote to Theo: ‘I really have wanted to make it so that people get the idea that these folk, who are eating their potatoes by the light of their little lamp, have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish, that they have thus honestly earned their food.’
Press A for more information about the painting, or press B for information about the family that modelled for the painting.