Postimpressionism In The Potato Eaters

We are fortunate to have the ability to view pieces of artwork from the past that can link different time periods to the present day. In this paper, I will compare two famous paintings that have vastly different themes based on their time period, as well as analyze a contemporary expression from present time. The first painting I will analyze is The Merry Family by Dutch artist Jan Steen. This painting was created during the Dutch Baroque period in 1668 and depicts a family around the dinner table in pure jubilation. The second painting that I will analyze was painted in 1885 by another Dutch artist, Vincent Van Gogh, named The Potato Eaters. Painted during the Postimpressionism period, Van Gogh portrays a small farm family that is overworked

The main difference between the two paintings is the mood of the families. In The Merry Family every person in the painting is singing, smiling, or raising his or her glass. The dog even looks like it is smiling while raising its nose, waiting to be fed more leftovers. At the time, the middle class in the Netherlands was growing and becoming more affluent (MindEdge, 2017). In contrast, the family depicted in The Potato Eaters, seems tired, overworked, and sick of eating the same potatoes that they have had to not only eat every day for the last month, but they also had to work all day picking them out of the ground. There is no smiling, the room is small, and the table is not big enough to accommodate the entire family. Van Gogh saw himself as a peasant artist and tried to depict the lives of peasants through his studies of them (Jones, 2017). Also, there is small plate of food and five small cups of tea as opposed to the massive piece of meat and full glasses of wine in The Merry Family. Both artists depicted what it was like for the majority of people during the time the paintings were created. They show that depending on the time period in which you were in, it can affect the mood and relationships of a