Peasant Character Studies (Van Gogh series)
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| Artist | Vincent van Gogh |
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| Year | 1881–82 |
| Catalogue | F869 |
| Type | Watercolor |
| Location | P. and N. de Boer Foundation, Amsterdam |
Peasant Character Studies is a series of works that Vincent van Gogh made between 1881 and 1885.
Van Gogh had a particular attachment and sympathy for peasants and other working class people that was fueled in several ways. He was particularly fond of the peasant genre work of Jean-François Millet and others. He found the subjects noble and important in the development of modern art. Van Gogh had seen the changing landscape in the Netherlands as industrialization encroached on once pastoral settings and the livelihoods of the working poor with little opportunity to change vocation.
Van Gogh had a particular interest in creating character studies of working men and women in the Netherlands and Belgium, such as farmers, weavers, and fishermen. Making up a large body of Van Gogh's work during this period, the character studies were an important, foundational component in his artistic development.
The "peasant genre" of the Realism movement began in the 1840s with the works of Jean-François Millet, Jules Breton, and others. Van Gogh described the works of Millet and Breton as having religious significance, "something on high," and described them as being the "voices of the wheat."
The Van Gogh Museum says of Millet's influence on Van Gogh: "Millet's paintings, with their unprecedented depictions of peasants and their labors, mark a turning point in 19th-century art. Before Millet, peasant figures were just one of many elements in picturesque or nostalgic scenes. In Millet's work, individual men and women became heroic and real. Millet was the only major artist of the Barbizon School who was not interested in 'pure' landscape painting."
In 1880 when he was 27 years old, Van Gogh decided to become an artist. In October of that year he moved to Brussels and began a beginner's course of study.
Van Gogh returned to Etten in April 1881 to live with his parents and studied art on his own. His younger brother Theo, an art dealer at the main branch of Goupil & Cie, encouraged him and started covering Van Gogh's expenses.
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