Day 49 - The Potato Eaters

Vincent Van Gogh, April 1885, Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam.

Have you ever dreamt of stepping into a painting?

So starts the publicity for the Van Gogh Exhibit: The Immersive Experience. I was fortunate to see this last year when it visited Leicester, and if it comes to a town near you grab a ticket because it’s a fascinating experience.

In the exhibition there’s plenty to read all about his life, there’s a re-creation of his Bedroom at Arles, there’s a chance to sit down and see something of his life story flood over you in immersive images and there’s a wonderful virtual reality walk alongside the artist as you see some of the landscapes he captured – including the Sunflowers and the Starry Night Over The Rhone River.

Vincent Van Gogh was the son of Dutch Reformed Minister. He had an inclination to be a Pastor himself and spent time as a Missionary in Belgium. If faith ran in the family then so did art, with his grandfather (also called Vincent) a well known art dealer, and three of his uncles were art dealers too.

It was Van Gogh’s brother, Theo, who encouraged him to take art seriously, and who recommended that he study with the Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, then attending the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts.

If you read any book on Van Gogh's life then you will discover that religion was the central driving force in his life, and there is rich spiritual meaning in his legendary images of starry nights, fields of wheat, sunflowers and emotionless, simple peasants. Among more than 2,300 Van Gogh works, only a handful depict classic religious scenes. He deliberately avoided such subjects, scholars say, preferring to express the divine as reflected in nature or in the soulful eyes of the peasants, miners and prostitutes in his life. The radiant yellows he used to colour his sun, stars and wheat fields were symbols of God’s love.

Vincent Van Gogh’s painting, “The Potato Eaters,” is a grimy portrayal of dirty peasants sharing a meal in their dark and miserable hut. Scholars say the work includes powerful religious imagery: the poor peasants as spiritually superior servants of God who win grace through honest work; the meal as a sacred Eucharistic celebration; and, the glowing yellow of the overhead lamp illuminating the dark faces in the light of God.

There’s no doubt Vincent Van Gogh was an immensely skilled and talented artist. Yet he was also a very troubled individual. Often these two seem to go hand in hand, a genius who travels a very bumpy road. To be fair, very few people in life seem to get away without encountering sharp bends in the road and potholes in the surface. That’s what makes it even more imperative to hold on tight to the promises of God, to trust only in his grace and to believe in him as our Lord and Saviour.

Neil Chappell