Peasant Burning Weeds

Peasant Burning Weeds is one of the paintings from Vincent Van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo. The letters included a small sketch of the picture. The painting consists of a weed burner.

It also conveys more of the plain and gathering dusk's vastness, and the small fire with the wisp of smoke as the only point of light, as Van Gogh describes it in the letter.

The painting Peasant Burning Weeds was worked on by Van Gogh between September to December in 1883. During this time in Drenthe, In the North of the Netherlands, he worked in Nieuw Amsterdam and Hoogeveen's villages. He sent a sketch of the picture in a letter to his brother on 22nd October 1883. The painting was acquired jointly in an expensive auction in New York by the Drents Museum in Assen and the Van Gough Museum in Amsterdam.

Out of the eighteen oil paintings he mentioned in his letters while in Drenthe, only five of them remain, all now in Dutch Museums. One of them is at the Drents Museum, while three are at the Amsterdam Museum and one a jointly owned work (Peasant Burning Weeds). Gogh Sunflowers and Landscape in Drenthe are among his famous paintings while in Drenthe.

Artist Vincent Van Gogh first began by studying his own and embracing books such as Travaux Des Champs, written by Jean-Francois Millet and Cours De Dessin, written by Charles Bargue. He broke ground in 1885 and worked on Potato Eaters, which is still considered as his first Masterpiece. In 1886 he moved to the French capital and experienced for the first time Impressionist art that had him fascinated by how artists used colour and light to create incredible pieces.

Van Gogh's move to the French capital had a massive impact on is work. His styles were greatly impacted by individuals like Monet, Pissaro, Bernard and Gauguin. Gaugin was his greatest inspiration right from the time they met, in 1887. He influenced most of his themes and styles. Millet worked as a missionary and identifying with people of the lower class was the cause of Vincent's great admiration for her. His early portrait of peasants in paintings inspired Vincent Van Gogh's early works as a painter, including the Peasant Burning Weeds.

Vincent Van Gough's work and technique were widely received and inspired by many great artists and painters. Matisse, Pollock, Bacon, and Derain, among many others, took up his artistic elements in their works. Even after his death, he inspires many artists who follow in his footsteps and similarly depict similar subject matters to his work.