Testa di contadina

In the winter of 1884 and 1885 Van Gogh was living with his parents in the Dutch village of Nuenen and painting the local farm workers, roughly 40 heads one after another. This is one of them. He wanted the studies for a big picture he was planning, The Potato Eaters, showing a peasant family eating by lamplight. This was years before the bright colour people know him for. Here he worked on purpose in the browns and greys of the soil, saying that a picture of peasants ought to smell of bacon, smoke and steaming potatoes. The woman wears the white bonnet of the region. The Kroller-Muller Museum, which owns this head, also holds the full-size study for The Potato Eaters itself.