One Potato Two: treasures from our collection

Anyone who has ever dug up a row of potatoes by hand has a kind of "treasure hunt" experience, at least the first time. You brush away the soil, and one by one the potatoes are revealed, much as the nursery rhyme implies--One potato, two potato, three potato and so on. That's what we propose to do here---reveal treasures from TPM's collection, one by one.

One

"You Priceless Old Thing" by Fred Spurgin

Potatoes were also in short supply in England during the first war. The "potatoes daily" English sacrificed by giving up potatoes at least once a week so more could be sent to the frontline troops. People sent postcards to remind each other of the tasty but scarce tuber.

Two

"Prayer for the Potato Crop" (The Angelus) by J.F. Millet (1857)
original oil painting in Musée d'Orsay, Paris

"The Angelus" was reproduced frequently in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Potato Museum owns several dozen early 20th century reproductions of this image. Commissioned by a wealthy American, Thomas G. Appleton, and completed during the summer of 1857, Millet added a steeple and changed the initial title of the work, Prayer for the Potato Crop to The Angelus when the purchaser failed to take possession in 1859. Displayed to the public for the first time in 1865, the painting changed hands several times, increasing only modestly in value, since some considered the artist's political sympathies suspect. Upon Millet's death a decade later, a bidding war between the US and France ensued, ending some years later with a price tag of 800,000 gold francs.

Learn more about the J.F. Millet and the Angelus here.

Three

"Potato Harvest in the Fens" (detail of an engraving)
by Robert Walker Macbeth (1848-1910)

R. W. Macbeth was a painter of genre and outdoor contemporary scenes, often of the countryside and the people working there. However, he is better known as a prolific illustrator, mainly for the Graphic. He was born in Glasgow, the son of the Scottish portraitist Norman Macbeth RSA, coming to London after studying at the RSA Schools. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1871, became ARA in 1883 and RA in 1903, and apparently was greatly influenced by Frederick Walker.

The Fens are an area of former wetlands in the counties of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk in eastern England. The region lies west and south of The Wash. It now covers approximately 1,300 km² (320,000 acres), but in 1911 the Encyclopaedia Britannica estimated its extent as being considerably over half a million acres (2,000 km²). Geologically, the fenlands are a silted-up bay of the North Sea that embraces the lower drainage basins of the rivers Witham, Welland, Nene and Great Ouse. A number of towns claim to be the 'heart' or 'capital' of the fens, including Spalding and Wisbech.

300 years ago, the Fens were similar to the Florida Everglades, a large area of low-lying land, though in a cooler climate. The Fens and fenmen have their own history and distinctive cultural characteristics. When need be, a few of the native fenmen moved about nimbly on stilts (the "stilt-walkers").

Read more about the Fens here.

Four

"Potatoes Grow Big Here" exaggerated post cards from the early part of the 20th century were sent by European settlers to the western parts of North America to relatives boasting of the bounty of their new home.

Five

"Baked Potato Man", London, 1930's

Read more about baked potatoes here.

Six

"Turkey" by Helen R. Haddad, potato print

Learn more about the art of printmaking with potatoes here.

Seven

A work in progress.

Eight

Nine