Head of a Peasant Woman with White Cap

In the winter of 1884 and 1885, living with his parents in the Brabant village of Nuenen, Van Gogh set out to become a painter of peasants. He made around 40 studies of local farmworkers' heads, and this is one of them. The white caps that the women of the region wore fascinated him, partly for the way they threw the faces beneath into shadow. Look closely and the cap is not really white at all, but built up from many muted colours. These heads were practice for the picture he was aiming at, The Potato Eaters, finished in 1885, with its dark room and coarse hands around a plate of potatoes. This was Van Gogh before Paris and before bright colour, still committed to the browns and earth tones of the poor lives he wanted to paint.