Head of a Peasant Woman with Dark Cap

On 30 December 1884, writing from the Brabant village of Nuenen, Van Gogh told his brother Theo that he did not know in advance what he would do with all the heads he was painting. He wanted, he said, to derive the subject from the characters themselves. In the same letter he recalled what had once been written about Giotto, that he was the first to put goodness into the expression of human heads. This small study comes from the weeks that followed. It was painted in January 1885 and measures only about 25 by 19 centimetres, on canvas now mounted on a panel. The woman is turned in strict profile, her dark cap pulled low over her brow. Her face is laid in with warm, ruddy strokes against a pale, yellowish ground, where many of the studies from that winter sit against darkness.