Portrait of a Woman

Van Gogh arrived in Paris at the beginning of 1886, and for part of that spring he worked in the studio of Fernand Cormon, a successful painter who let students draw from plaster casts and from hired models. Faces were what he wanted to paint, and models cost money he did not have. This canvas is only about 32 centimetres tall, the size of a study made in one sitting, and the woman in it wears gloves and a brooch. Her name was never written down. The picture stayed with the family, unsold, and it has been in Amsterdam since the Van Gogh Museum opened in 1973.