Exploring the Dutch town where Vincent van Gogh perfected his technique and The Potato Eaters
There are so many tulips in Amsterdam, but Vincent van Gogh’s sunflowers are hidden from view.
Early risers bend over to photograph the bulbous flowers spilling from pots outside the Van Gogh Museum and sit up to capture the bubbling cherry blossoms on the trees around the Museumsplein, Amsterdam’s largest square, which borders some of the city’s major museums.
Meanwhile, my daughter and I are rushing to the museum, which has not yet opened, and a queue has started to form here.
“Do you have a ticket?” asks a security guard.
We don’t. “It’s completely booked today,” he says. In fact, the museum’s temporary visitor slots have been sold out for the next 10 days – our entire stay in the Netherlands.
Sign up for the Traveler Deals newsletter
Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up now.
Tulip flood attracts tourists who want to catch van Gogh’s paintings sunflowers (1888-1889), which blooms every year behind the doors of the museum. Note to self: Next time, book in advance.
Plan B comes into play. Admiring the works of van Gogh in the Rijksmuseum wheat field (1888), self portrait (1887) and View of Amsterdam from Central Station (1885), a work inspired by his visit to this museum when it opened in 1885.
Then we move on to Plan C: a trip to the Van Gogh Village in Nuenen in the southern Dutch province of Brabant, where the master perfected his technique.
The train journey from central Amsterdam to Eindhoven takes 90 minutes, and our friends pick us up there for the short trip to Nuenen. On the way, I imagine 30-year-old Vincent arriving by train from Drenthe in late 1883, vast fields of farmland blanketed in snow, the peasants who would soon become his subjects bundled up against the cold.
“You will certainly find it very understandable that I love the countryside here,” he later wrote to his brother Theo, a Paris-based art dealer.
The town’s most important work is an interactive museum, which was expanded and reopened in 2023 by Queen Maxima of the Netherlands. Across the road is the vicarage where van Gogh initially stayed with his mother and priest father. Nuenen’s works include depictions of houses and gardens. But the most famous of these extraordinary outputs Potato Eaters (1885), he said, “after all it is the best thing I have ever done.”
This masterpiece was inspired by encounters with the De Groots, a peasant family whose cottages were located on the edge of town. It no longer exists, but Van Gogh recalled the setting in a letter to Theo: “You see, I really wanted to do this, so that people would understand that these people who eat their potatoes by the light of little lamps, with these hands they put on the plate, they themselves cultivate the land, and therefore speak of manual labor, and thus earn their food honestly.”
The oil on canvas, which “really resembles the color of a dusty potato, unpeeled of course,” is on display at the fully-packed Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. But here, in his birthplace, we are immersed in the artist’s environment: the elegant home of Margot Begemann, with whom Van Gogh had an inevitable love affair; the carpenter’s workshop where his canvases were stretched and his paintings framed; the postman’s house, where he sent new works to Theo in exchange for financial assistance.
Down the road is the Van Goghkerkje chapel where his father preached. It is more joyful than the melancholy image painted of his mother when she was bedridden and unable to attend church services.
In the museum we find sketches of villagers scattered around the replica studio; an interactive light lab where we tested the artist’s use of colour, light and perspective; and a model of De Groots’ cramped kitchen; We pose for photographs imitating these immortalized subjects here.
Like them, we have now earned our living. We walk towards De Aardappeleters (The Potato Eaters), a cafeteria that serves all kinds of fries.
I order friet oorlog (war fries), a street food garnished with satay sauce, raw onions and mayonnaise. In my opinion, potatoes are the most satisfying substitute for hard-to-find sunflowers.
DETAIL
TRANSPORT
Eindhoven is an hour from the center of Amsterdam by train. You can reach Nuenen by taking the Line 6 bus from Eindhoven; this journey takes approximately 15 minutes and tickets cost approximately 3 euros. Alternatively, you can use Uber.
VISIT
Admission to the Van Gogh Village Museum is $24 for adults; To see vangoghvillagenuenen.nl/tr
Admission is free if you have a Dutch Museum Pass ($134 for adults for one year; includes admission to over 500 museums). To see museum.nl/tr/museumpass
The author traveled at his own expense.
Catherine Marshall has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and has won awards in Australia and abroad for her travel writing and reportage. He specializes in emerging destinations, conservation and immersive travel.Connect with: X.
