Portrait of a Young Woman

In 1887 Bernard's parents rented a house in Asnières, just outside Paris, with a wooden studio in the garden. Van Gogh came out to work beside him there, and the museum considers it almost certain that he saw this canvas in that studio. Bernard was 19. He had just walked away from the dotted brushwork of the Neo-Impressionists, and the picture holds together on a balance of blues against reds, the sitter turned square to the painter with a level, unblinking gaze. Her name went unrecorded. Bernard gave the painting to a friend, Jacques Tasset, and it stayed with the family for over a century. His heirs sent it to a Paris saleroom in June 2020, listed as the portrait of a girl with a bow, and the Van Gogh Museum bought it through a London dealer in April 2022. It is 41 centimetres tall, small enough to carry under one arm.