Cottage with Peasant Woman Digging

A large thatched roof fills the upper half of the picture, and on the reddish-brown wall a small window and a dark doorway can be seen. In the right foreground, a peasant woman in a blue skirt bends over toward the ground. Tree leaves grow thick at the upper left, and greenish blue and white clouds peek through the sky. It is painted with forceful brushwork, in oil on canvas, measuring 30.5 x 40.0 cm.

According to the museum's commentary, van Gogh moved to Nuenen in 1883, and from around this time he took up oil painting in earnest, depicting peasants, craftsmen, and nearby landscapes. This work was painted in June 1885, the month after his major work The Potato Eaters (1885).

In a letter to his brother Theo, van Gogh wrote that he wanted a few more farmhouses on the heath, and this work is said to be one of those mentioned in that letter. For van Gogh, who revered Millet, painting the dwellings of peasants was an important subject expressing the hardship of their lives and their bond with nature. He compared a farmhouse to the nest of a wren, a small wild bird, and called it a "peasant's nest." Several works of the same subject from the same period survive.