Head of a Woman

In the winter of 1884 into 1885, in the Dutch village of Nuenen, Vincent van Gogh set himself a plain, stubborn task. He paid local farm workers a few coins to sit, and painted their heads one after another, around 40 of them, in the brown, earthy tones he still favoured. This is one of those studies, a working woman in her everyday cap, seen close against a dark ground. They were done with a purpose: that spring they fed into his first ambitious composition, The Potato Eaters, the picture of a peasant family at their evening meal that he finished in May 1885. Within a year Van Gogh had moved to Paris, met the Impressionists, and left this dark manner behind.