Van Gogh Village Nuenen

Vincent van Gogh lived in Nuenen from December 1883 to November 1885, in the parsonage where his father was the minister, and it was the most productive period of his Dutch years - about a quarter of his total output was made here, some five hundred drawings and nearly two hundred paintings, almost all of them dark: weavers at their looms, peasants in the fields, the church, and in April 1885 The Potato Eaters, the picture he considered his first real painting. He left after his father's death and a scandal in the village and never came back. Nuenen has marked around twenty sites - the parsonage, the church, the mill, the weavers' houses, the field where the tower stood - with a walking and cycling route between them, and the Vincentre museum in the centre covers the two years in detail. No original paintings are here.

What you actually see

• Two years of sites marked - about twenty locations from the 1883-1885 period.
• The parsonage and the church - his father's house and the building he painted.
• Where The Potato Eaters was made - the weavers' and peasants' houses on the route.
• The Vincentre museum - the period documented in the village centre.

When to go

April to October. A day.

Honest expectations

There are no original Van Gogh paintings in Nuenen - they are in Amsterdam and Otterlo. The sites are markers and the walk is the visit. The museum closes on Mondays. The village is otherwise a commuter suburb.

Nearby

Eindhoven is south-west; the Kroller-Muller collection is far north on the Veluwe.