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The Potato Eaters

Vincent van Gogh · 1885

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Van Gogh Museum

Amsterdam

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam keeps the world's largest collection of Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings, hung in the order he painted them.

About 200 paintings
by Vincent van Gogh in the collection: About 400 drawings
by Vincent van Gogh in the collection: About 700 letters
by Vincent van Gogh in the collection: About 660 Japanese prints
in Van Gogh's own collection

The world's Van Gogh collection

The museum opened on 2 June 1973 in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, built to show the work of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries. Its Van Gogh collection is the largest anywhere, some two hundred paintings joined by hundreds of drawings and letters in his own hand.

The permanent display follows the phases of his working life in order. Another floor hangs his canvases beside the painters he worked with and looked at.

Two buildings, one walk

Two buildings, the Rietveld Building and the Kurokawa Wing, together form the Van Gogh Museum: a main building by Gerrit Rietveld, open since 1973, and an exhibition wing by Kisho Kurokawa finished in 1999, connected by a new entrance hall.

Beyond Vincent

Around the Van Gogh rooms the museum shows work by the painters of his own day, from the Impressionists to the Post-Impressionists, and sculpture by Auguste Rodin and Jules Dalou. Among the painters are Gauguin, Bernard, Manet, Monet, Redon, Seurat, Signac and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Vincent's own collection of Japanese woodblock prints belongs to the museum too, some six hundred and sixty sheets that steered his colour, with prints by Hiroshige, Kuniyoshi and Kunisada among them.

What to see

The Potato Eaters
Vincent van Gogh · 1885
Four faces lean around a lamp over a dish of potatoes, a fifth figure seen from behind, the rough supper of a peasant family in a dark cottage room. He painted it in Nuenen in 1885.

Almond Blossom
Vincent van Gogh · 1890
Pale blossom branches laid against a clear blue sky. He painted it for the birth of his nephew and namesake, the son of his brother Theo.

Wheatfield with Crows
Vincent van Gogh · 1890
Black crows scatter over ripe wheat under a heavy, clouded sky. He painted it in July 1890, and it has long been taken for one of his final works.

The Yellow House
Vincent van Gogh · 1888
A corner house and the street beside it under a deep yellow wash, shuttered windows and the street running past. Van Gogh painted this oil in 1888.

Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette
Vincent van Gogh · 1885–86
A bare skull with a lit cigarette clenched between its teeth, painted in the winter of 1885 to 1886.

Harvest at La Crau, with Montmajour in the Background
Vincent van Gogh · 1888
A blue hay cart, ladders and stacked sheaves across a wide plain of wheat and hay, the abbey of Montmajour far off on the horizon under a calm sky.

Vincent van Gogh Painting Sunflowers
Paul Gauguin · 1888
Gauguin's portrait of Vincent seated at his easel among his sunflowers, made in Arles in December 1888.

The Jetty of Boulogne-sur-Mer
Édouard Manet · 1868
A pier running out to sea under a broad sky, small figures and moored boats at the water's edge, Manet's painting of 1868.

Windmills near Zaandam
Claude Monet · 1871
Windmills and a cluster of low houses along a waterway, Monet's canvas of 1871.

Portrait of Vincent van Gogh (1887)
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec · 1887
Vincent caught in profile by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Collections

Paintings by Vincent van Gogh
Tree Roots · Vincent van Gogh · 1890
The core of the museum: the world's largest Van Gogh collection, shown in the order of his working life. Here Tree Roots, likely Van Gogh's final painting, made at Auvers-sur-Oise in July 1890.

Gauguin and Bernard
Self-portrait with Portrait of Bernard · Paul Gauguin · 1888
Here Gauguin's self-portrait, a portrait of Bernard set into the wall behind him.

Impressionists and Post-Impressionists
The Seine at Courbevoie · Georges Seurat
The French painters whose work hangs beside Van Gogh's own, among them Manet, Monet, Seurat, Signac and Redon. Here the Seine at Courbevoie by Seurat.

Artists

Vincent van Gogh
Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin · 1887
A Dutch Post-Impressionist painter, among the most influential figures in Western art, who made about 2,100 artworks in little more than a decade.

Paul Gauguin
Breton Girl Spinning · 1889
A French painter, sculptor and printmaker tied to the Post-Impressionist and Symbolist movements, who painted Vincent at work in Arles.

Émile Bernard
Boy sitting in the grass · 1886
A French Post-Impressionist painter and writer.

Odilon Redon
The Buddha · 1904
A French Symbolist draughtsman, printmaker and painter, whose works hang among the museum's contemporaries.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Spanish Dancer
A French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and illustrator.

Gustave Caillebotte
View Seen Through a Balcony · 1880
A French painter who was both a member and a patron of the Impressionists.

Anton Mauve
Donkey Stand on the Beach at Scheveningen · 1876
A Dutch realist painter and a leading member of the Hague School.

Camille Pissarro
Route de Versailles, Rocquencourt · 1871
A Danish-French painter of the Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist movements, born on the island of Saint Thomas.

Artworks

Vincent van Gogh
John Peter Russell · 1886

Haymaking, Éragny
Camille Pissarro · 1887

Self-Portrait with Portrait of Gauguin
Émile Bernard · 1888

Apollo Slays Python
Eugène Delacroix · 1850

Vase with Flowers
Adolphe Joseph Thomas Monticelli · 1875

The grape harvest
Jules Bastien-Lepage · 1880

Railway Junction near Bois-Colombes
Paul Signac · 1885

Woman in a gothic arcade- woman with flowers
Odilon Redon · 1905

Two Breton women in a meadow
Émile Bernard · 1886

Sources

Van Gogh Museum: www.vangoghmuseum.nl

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