Claudia Roden: Immigrant Workers in Paris Having Their Casse-Croûte

Year: 1956

Private Collectie, London

 

General information about this room: click on the infobutton on the painting on your left .

 

This painting of our favorite culinary writer Claudia Roden is a beautiful example of an artists'admiration for a simple way of life.

Henk Chabot - Farmer eating

Year: 1945/46

141 x 141 cm

Oil on canvas

Chabot Museum Rotterdam/Collectie Grootveld

 

After the Golden Age, the rich foodculture slowly declined. Parts of the population went hungry. Calvinists took advantage of this situation by proclaiming soberness. Exotic spices and ingredients disappeared, cheapness and nutriciousness became more important than taste and sophistication. Sobriety became a virtue.

Nevertheless artists became attracted to the concept of sobriety. Their paintings can be interpreted as a protest against the poverty, but also as a paean on the beauty of a simple way of life.

Henk Chabot - Family with empty pan

Year: 1944/45

139 x 124 cm Oil on canvas

Chabot Museum Rotterdam/

Grootveld collection / Warcollection

 

General information: click on the infobutton on your left in this room

Vincent van Gogh - The Potato Eaters (fragment)

Year: 1885

82 x 114 cm

oil on canvas

Collection Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam

 

Maybe you think that Van Gogh's potatoe-eaters are having a typical old Dutch meal, but that's not true. This farmersfamily from Nuenen is eating a product of South-American origin which was neglected for a long time because the plant is toxic. Just after serious grain crop failures people started eating potatoes as a cheap alternative for the expensive ryebread and the unaffordable wheatbread.