Head of a Woman

Through the winter of 1884 into 1885, Van Gogh painted head after head of the country people around Nuenen, something like 40 of them, always seen from the shoulders up against a dark ground and always in their working clothes. This is one of that run, a woman in a dark hood, made early in 1885. What he was chasing in these studies was the play of light and shadow across the caps and faces, the way a pale cap sits over skin half in darkness. He worked Prussian blue into the cloth and left traces of red on the cheeks and lips, and he set the paint down in short strokes side by side, so the face is built up rather than smoothed out. He wrote that these peasant heads were hard to get right and, to him, eternally beautiful.