Potato eaters

In the summer of 1855, Israëls sought relief for his rheumatism by staying at the seaside. He lodged for some time with the village carpenter in Zandvoort and it was there that he decided to abandon his relatively unprofitable history painting practice and to take everyday contemporary life as his subject. He painted members of the fishing communities of Katwijk, Zandvoort and Scheveningen and the insides of their homes. His work emphasises the poverty that was a fact of life in these communities.

Peasant family mealtimes are a recurrent theme. Potato eaters is the last variant he produced on it. The first version of the subject, painted around 1870, shows peasants eating bread. In this 1876 painting, however, this is replaced by the equally frugal potato. Potato eaters shows four elderly people seated around a table in a plain interior, silently consuming their meagre fare.

Source: J. Sillevis, A. Tabak (eds.), Het Haagse School boek, Den Haag, Zwolle, 2001 and D. Dekkers (ed.), Jozef Israëls 1824-1911, Groningen, Amsterdam 2001.