In Peasant Character Studies (Van Gogh series), how is the Regard for peasants and manual laborers of the Background elucidated?
Throughout Van Gogh's adulthood he had an interest in serving others, especially manual workers.  As a young man, he served and ministered to coal miners in Borinage, Belgium, which seemed to bring him close to his calling of being a missionary or minister to workers.He held laborers up to a high standard of the dedication with which he should approach painting, "One must undertake with confidence, with a certain assurance that one is doing a reasonable thing, like the farmer who drives his plow... (one who) drags the harrow behind himself.  If one hasn't a horse, one is one's own horse."The close association of peasants and the cycles of nature particularly interested Van Gogh, such as the sowing of seeds, harvest and sheaves of wheat in the fields. Van Gogh saw plowing, sowing and harvesting symbolic to man's efforts to overwhelm the cycles of nature.
peasant Belgium harrow Borinage