Portrait of a Woman

Van Gogh arrived in Paris at the end of February 1886 without warning anyone, and sent Theo a note asking him to come to the Louvre. This small head of a woman in a hat belongs to the months right after that arrival. The canvas is about 27 by 19 centimetres, the size a painter works at when materials are being counted out. Nobody knows who she was. He wanted portrait work and complained for years that sitters cost more than he could pay, which is part of why so much of his output in 1886 is plants, plaster casts and his own reflection. No letter of his has been matched to this woman, and she carries no name in the catalogues, which list the picture simply as Portrait of a Woman.