Van Gogh Museum — Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

This one, apparently, was one of three repeats he made a few months after the originals — meant as a gift for Gauguin, though it never actually reached him.

I couldn't find much background on this one, no anecdote to pass along — if anyone knows the story behind that lit candle, I'd love to hear it.

There's a story that this was the very last thing he painted, and from what I can find that isn't right — it's from his final weeks, but other canvases came after. The long, letterbox shape wasn't a one-off either; he did a run of them that same summer.

The aim, from what I can find, was people who looked like they'd actually dug the food sitting in front of them — in a letter he said he wanted the whole thing to smell of bacon, smoke and potato steam. It got pulled apart when it was new, apparently even by a painter friend of his, mostly over the drawing being off.

From what I can find he was still teaching himself to draw when he made this — no training, just prints of an older painter's peasant scenes copied over and over until the figures came right. He kept going back to this same striding sower for years afterwards.

Painted as a present for his brother's newborn son, who'd been given his name. They say the family hung it over their bed. The flat, bright look of it supposedly owes a lot to the Japanese prints he collected.