Head of a girl

In the early summer of 1888 Van Gogh had just moved to Arles, in the south of France, and the heat and light there set him drawing at a furious pace. He had taken up a reed pen cut from the local marsh reeds, which gave a bold, broken line close to the Japanese prints and the old Dutch masters he loved. Over a few days that June he made a run of head studies of ordinary local people, and mailed a batch north to John Russell, an Australian painter he had befriended in Paris. This quick portrait of a young woman came out of that stretch. He was after a plain, unflattered likeness, the sort Daumier drew, and he chased it in short, rapid strokes rather than any polish.