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The Potato Eaters, by Vincent Van Gogh, was painted in 1885, which was just after Courbet's Realist movement. Van Gogh was in the Netherlands when he painted The Potato Eaters and he was hoping that it would be his big master-piece to get him started as an artist, but the painting did not receive as much attention as Van Gogh had hoped. Since Courbet had just started the Realist movement Van Gogh must have thought that if he wanted to be a famous artist he should use the style that is most desired. However, the impressionists were also just starting to become a large part of the art community and Van Gogh happened to make this painting at the exact wrong time for it to be admired in the art community. Van Gogh quickly became a post-impressionist and became a much respected post- impressionist artist, and today The Potato Eaters is considered Van Gogh's first masterpiece.
Van Gogh uses realism in this painting and it almost seems as though he uses sfumato throughout the entire painting. The painting is very dark and the people look dirty and ugly. The people are wearing tattered clothing, and they are sharing potatoes between the five of them. These people are obviously poor and Van Gogh does not try to glamorize their life; he actually tried to make them look very ugly and dirty so that they will look very poor and starved. Their fingers are very bony and these five people are crowded around a small table with one lamp. Van Gogh almost takes the realist sense of the painting a little to far, this may have been why it was not so loved by the art community.
These people of the proletariat must go through this every night. This is why they would be able to become powerful as a country’s government. These people know how to work together and share like a family should. The proletariat is like a family and this is why they would be able to create a strong government. There would be much more trust within the government and it would be more like a family than a government.
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