This conveys the inscribed grime and time of years of oppressively hard labour. I noticed recently that recurrent harsh weather can also wear people out, stripping away their bloom.
‘I particularly remember one of his (Van Gogh’s) earliest studies, that of a family of peasants eating; their clay-furrowed faces seemed forked from the earth, and they were eating with hands like roots.’
Source: Laurie Lee, I Can’t Stay Long (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977 ((1975)), p. 180
