[4] He began working on The Potato Eaters while living with his parents in Nuenen, a rural town which was home to many farmers, labourers and weavers.

This was a blow to Van Gogh's confidence as an emerging artist, and he wrote back to his friend, "you... had no right to condemn my work in the way you did" (July 1885), and later, "I am always doing what I can't do yet in order to learn how to do it."

[9] Vincent Van Gogh is known to have admired the Belgian painter Charles de Groux and in particular his work The blessing before supper.

[13] In a letter dated around 3 December 1882[14] he remarks I believe, though, that it would be a great mistake to imagine that such things as, for instance, the print The Grace (a family of woodcutters or peasants at table) were created at a stroke in their final form.

On the other hand, one overlooks many an unpretentious woodcut or lithograph or etching now and then, but comes back to it and becomes more and more attached to it with time, and senses something great in it.Van Gogh is often associated in people's minds with the Post-Impressionist movement, but in fact his artistic roots lay much closer to home in the artists of the Hague School such as Anton Mauve and Jozef Israëls.

In a letter to his brother Theo written mid-June 1884, Vincent remarks: When I hear you talk about a lot of new names, it's not always possible for me to understand when I've seen absolutely nothing by them.

Thieves stole the early version of The Potato Eaters, the Weaver's Interior, and Dried Sunflowers from the Kröller-Müller Museum in December 1988.

[19] On 14 April 1991, the Vincent van Gogh National Museum was robbed of twenty major paintings including the final version of The Potato Eaters.