Landscape with House and Ploughman

Van Gogh's Nuenen landscapes combining farmhouses and agricultural labourers were systematic attempts to document the social and physical landscape of Brabant before its transformation by industrial modernity. The ploughman in particular held an almost iconic status in his iconographic programme, derived from his deep reverence for Millet's Sower and Man with a Hoe. He wrote repeatedly of his desire to create a Dutch equivalent of Millet — images of rural labour that would carry the same moral weight as Millet's French peasant subjects. These paintings also reflect the influence of Jules Breton and Anton Mauve, his cousin-in-law and first significant painting teacher.

A low horizon emphasises the wide Brabant sky, rendered in muted grey-blue. The farmhouse and foreground earth are painted in dark umber and ochre. The ploughman is a small dark figure integrated into the earth, consistent with Van Gogh's compositional practice of subordinating individual figures to the landscape.