Woman with a Broom

Woman with a Broom (1885) at the Kröller-Müller Museum belongs to Van Gogh's comprehensive documentation of domestic and agricultural labour performed by women in Nuenen — an aspect of his social-realist programme that ran parallel to his better-known potato-field and weaving subjects. Millet had elevated the figure of the woman at work — gleaner, spinner, broom-sweeper — to an image of secular dignity, and Van Gogh carried that inheritance while insisting on direct observation rather than idealisation. The broom-sweeping figure, bent to her task, is less dramatic than the potato-digger or the sheaf-binder but no less worthy of full pictorial attention in Van Gogh's moral universe. He was painting these figures at the rate of several per week during the most intensive period of his Nuenen practice, building the comprehensive visual vocabulary of physical labour that his major compositions required. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo.

The figure is captured in motion, the act of sweeping rendered through the posture and the relationship between body and broom. Van Gogh's dark Dutch palette dominates — ochres, raw umbers, dark greens — applied with a directness that reflects his daily practice of quick, sustained studies. The background is minimal, all attention directed to the figure.