First Steps, after Millet (1890)-full by Vincent van Gogh HD Download

First Steps, after Millet (1890)-full by Vincent van Gogh

First Steps, after Millet

Vincent van Gogh

Artist Vincent van Gogh

Date 1890

Medium Oil on canvas

Collection Metropolitan Museum of Art

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1800 x 1430 pixels · 2.61 MB · JPEG

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About the Artist

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (1853–1890)

Dutch post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh, born in Zundert, Netherlands, revolutionized modern art with his emotive brushwork and vivid color palettes. Despite a turbulent life marked by mental illness and poverty, he produced over 2,000 artworks, including masterpieces like The Starry Night and Sunflowers. His career began in earnest at age 27 after abandoning earlier pursuits in art dealing and religious ministry. Van Gogh’s work, initially dismissed as chaotic, later became foundational to Expressionism and Fauvism. He died by suicide at 37, leaving a legacy that reshaped 20th-century art.

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Artwork Story

Vincent van Gogh’s *First Steps, after Millet* is one of those odd ducks in his catalog—a painting that feels both deeply personal and strangely borrowed. He made it in 1890, not long before he died, and it’s a reworking of Jean-François Millet’s earlier depiction of rural life. Van Gogh was obsessed with Millet at the time, copying his compositions like a student trying to absorb a master’s secrets. But here’s the thing: even when he’s copying, van Gogh can’t help but make it his own. The colors are all wrong, in the best way—those yellows and greens cranked up to a pitch that Millet would’ve never dared. The scene itself is simple: a toddler wobbling toward their mother’s outstretched arms, the father watching from behind. But van Gogh’s brush turns it into something electric, like the whole world is vibrating with the kid’s first attempt at walking.
What’s weirdly moving about it is how unspectacular the moment is. This isn’t some grand biblical scene or a mythic tableau—it’s just a kid taking a step. But van Gogh, being van Gogh, makes it feel monumental anyway. The way the mother’s dress swirls around her, the way the father’s hands hover like he’s ready to catch the kid if they fall—it’s all so *human*. You can almost hear the dirt underfoot, smell the grass. And that’s the trick, really: van Gogh takes Millet’s quiet, earthy realism and sets it on fire without losing the tenderness.
If you squint, you can see echoes of this in his other late works—the way he’d paint a pair of old shoes like they were holy relics, or a wheat field like it was the edge of the world. There’s something about *First Steps* that feels like it’s part of that same feverish, last-ditch effort to cram everything he could into paint before time ran out. It’s not as flashy as *Starry Night* or as brutal as *Wheatfield with Crows*, but it’s got that same raw, jittery energy—like he’s trying to hold onto something before it slips away. And maybe that’s why it sticks with you. It’s not just a kid learning to walk; it’s van Gogh learning how to say goodbye.