Peasant Woman Digging 1885

Vincent van Gogh made this drawing, Peasant Woman Digging, using pencil on paper in the Netherlands sometime around 1885. It is one of many studies of peasant life he created in the early part of his career. In it, we see a woman bent at the waist, digging with a tool that looks something like a shovel. Van Gogh's choice of subject speaks to the artistic interest in everyday life that grew throughout the 19th century. He was invested in depicting laborers and working-class people, a subject most famously taken up by Realist painters like Courbet and Millet in France. But unlike Millet, who often imbued rural life with a sense of piety and nobility, Van Gogh’s image is filled with struggle and hardship. The woman’s form is hunched and strained, her labor unromanticized. To appreciate Van Gogh's motivations, one might turn to his letters and the history of Dutch Realism. These resources help us understand how artists sought to represent the changing social landscape of their time.