Still life with a Bearded-Man Jar

The jar with the scowling face was old even when Van Gogh set it on his table — a Bartmann jug, German salt-glazed stoneware with a bearded man's mask pressed into the neck, a shape potters had been making since the 16th century. He painted it in the winter of 1884, during his two years in the Dutch village of Nuenen, when his palette rarely strayed from the browns of peasant life. Only a few muted greens break the earth tones here. The pot and the tobacco jar beside it probably came from Antoon Hermans, a friend nearby who lent him objects to set up studies like this one.