Women on the Peat Moor

Van Gogh painted women on the peat moors near Drenthe during his brief stay there in late 1883, a period of intense loneliness and artistic searching. He had retreated to this remote northern region after the breakdown of his relationship with Sien Hoornik, hoping to find raw material among rural labourers untouched by modernity. These peat-cutters fascinated him as living relics of pre-industrial life, and he sketched and painted them obsessively. The figures are almost absorbed into the flat, desolate landscape, reflecting his reading of Emile Zola's Germinal and his belief that honest labour was the only worthy subject for art.

Broadly brushed with earth tones — raw umber, ochre, muted green — the figures merge with the boggy ground. Horizontal composition flattens the picture space. Thick, unmodulated paint gives the scene a sculptural heaviness appropriate to its subject matter.