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The Drinkers
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890)
1890
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 59.4 × 73.4 cm (23 3/8 × 28 7/8 in.); Framed: 78.9 × 93.3 cm (31 1/16 × 36 3/4 in.)
- Culture
- Netherlands
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Joseph Winterbotham Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
During his time in the Asylum of Saint-Paul in Saint-Rémy, a small town near Arles, Vincent van Gogh made a number of copies of the work of artists he admired, which freed him from having to produce original compositions and allowed him to concentrate instead on interpretation. For this image, Van Gogh copied a wood engraving from Honoré Daumier’s Drinkers, a parody on the four ages of man. The exaggerated figure types capture Daumier’s characteristic humor and convey his sad message about the horrors of alcoholism. The greenish palette may well be an allusion to the notorious alcoholic drink absinthe.
This is one of thirty-five works that comprise the Winterbotham Collection. Click here to learn more about the collection.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
