Peasant Woman Kneeling and Pulling Carrots

Vincent van Gogh Dutch

Not on view

Van Gogh embarked on an intensive drawing campaign in the summer of 1885 following the disappointing reception of his painting "The Potato Eaters." The criticism he received, particularly for his execution of the figures in that work, seems to have spurred a return to figure drawing focused on peasant laborers working outdoors. The precise nature of this woman’s action is hard to discern, but she has been described as pulling carrots due to annotations on related drawings. Occupying the full, large sheet, she is endowed with a monumental quality. On his ambition for the drawings, the artist wrote, "I do not want them academically correct… it is my great desire to learn how to make… changes in reality that they might become… truer than the literal truth." (Letter 418).

Peasant Woman Kneeling and Pulling Carrots, Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, Zundert 1853–1890 Auvers-sur-Oise), Black chalk and brush and wash

This image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Open Access

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

API

Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.