Head of a Woman

In the winter of 1884 and 1885, Van Gogh shut himself away in the Brabant village of Nuenen and painted the local farm workers, one head at a time. He did around 40 of these studies, always from the shoulders up, always in the clothes people actually wore in the fields. He wasn't after a likeness anyone would want to frame. He wrote to his brother Theo that he wanted to learn to paint a head with character, and the dark, earthy colours here were a choice, not a shortage of paint. The whole exercise was building toward one picture, The Potato Eaters, which he finished that May. Look at how little light he allows the face. He believed a peasant painting should smell of bacon, smoke and potato steam, and he was training his hand to carry that.