In the context of Peasant Character Studies (Van Gogh series), analyze the Industrialization of the Background.
Van Gogh was extremely mindful of the impact of 19th-century industrialization on the changing landscape and what that meant to people's lives.  Van Gogh wrote in a letter to Anthon van Rappard: "I remember as a boy seeing that heath and the little farms, the looms and the spinning wheels in exactly the same way as I see them now in Anton Mauve’s and Adam Frans van der Meulen’s drawings… But since then that part of Brabant with which I was acquainted has changed enormously in consequence of agricultural developments and the establishment of industries.  Speaking for myself, in certain spots I do not look without a little sadness on a new red-tiled tavern, remembering a loam cottage with a moss-covered thatched roof that used to be there.  Since then there have come beet-sugar factories, railways, agricultural developments of the heath, etc., which is infinitely less picturesque."
Anton Mauve Anton Mauve’s Adam Frans van der Meulen’s Adam Frans van der Meulen Anthon van Rappard