Tête de vieille paysanne à la coiffe blanche

Before van Gogh went south and found his bright colour, he spent two years in the Dutch village of Nuenen painting peasants, and painting them dark, in the browns and greys of the earth they worked. Over the winter of 1884 and 1885 he made dozens of studies of local farm workers' heads, wanting to catch faces shaped by hard outdoor labour. This old woman in her white cap is one of them. He was training himself for a bigger picture, The Potato Eaters, the dim supper scene he finished in 1885 and always counted among his best. The cap is the brightest thing here, a pale note set against the shadow so the weathered face steps forward.