these boots were made for walking

"Arguably more significant is that Van Gogh was himself a marathon walker. He could walk fifty miles in a day. When in England he trekked from Ramsgate to London in 24 hours in order, among other things, to visit the National Gallery, and did tours on foot from London to Brighton. He walked because he was broke. In the winter of 1879/80 he strode from the Borinage coalfields of Belgium to Courrières in northern France to visit the studio of Jules Breton, a painter whose heroicised accounts of decent working life he admired. Arriving at the artist's house he was too humble to knock. It was a week's round trip, and largely foodless and, as he wrote later, "it nearly killed me". So when Vincent painted old boots they stood for many things including ambition and the long road of self-improvement by hard work."
New shows. Art Review (London, England) v. 51 (October 1999) p. 18