Farmhand

Absent any reference to the physical activity or environment associated with his livelihood, a farmhand sits and stares. Extraordinarily precise strokes of charcoal capture the wrinkles and veins in his face and hands, and the textures of his shirt and vest. Dirk Nijland drew inspiration from the late Vincent van Gogh when he made this drawing in 1909. At the time, Dirk’s father, Hidde, a pioneering collector of modern Dutch art, owned 123 of Van Gogh’s early drawings; Dirk would eventually inherit two of them, including the one nearby. Here, Dirk transformed the nineteenth-century artist’s monumentalizing depiction of an anonymous laborer into a highly individualized portrait that captures both the harsh realities and the dignity of his way of life. The drawing, made for exhibition and viewed by a largely urban audience, presented a sympathetic but ultimately othering image of a class of people increasingly marginalized by the forces of industrialization and modernization.