Head of a Woman
Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890), Nuenen, March-May 1885
oil on canvas, 42.2 cm x 34.5 cm
Credits (obliged to state): Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Did Van Gogh care if his models were good-looking or not? He chose this woman for her appearance, but not for the reason you might expect.
He was looking specifically for country people, both men and women, who had ‘coarse, flat faces with low foreheads and thick lips’. He wanted to paint 50 of them as what he called ‘study heads’. Their facial features were intended to show that they lived in close communion with nature and the land they farmed. Van Gogh’s interest in physiognomy may seem odd to us now, but in his own time it was not unusual.
- F-number
- F0269r
- JH-number
- JH0725
- Object number
- s0097V1962r
- Dimensions
- 42.2 cm x 34.5 cm
- Provenance
- With his brother Theo van Gogh, Paris, after May 1885; after Theo’s death on 25 January 1891, inherited by his widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, and their son, Vincent Willem van Gogh, Paris; administered until her death on 2 September 1925 by Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Bussum/Amsterdam/Laren; transferred by Vincent Willem van Gogh, Laren, on 10 July 1962 to the Vincent van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam; agreement concluded on 21 July 1962 between the Vincent van Gogh Foundation and the State of the Netherlands, in which the preservation and management of the collection, and its placing in the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, to be realized in Amsterdam, is entrusted to the State; given on loan until the opening of the museum on 2 June 1973 to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; on permanent loan to the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh from 2 June 1973 and at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, since 1 July 1994.
- artist
- Vincent van Gogh
- Credits (obliged to state)
- Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Hiroshima, Hiroshima Prefectural Museum of Art, Van Gogh in Paris. New perspectives, 15 July 2013 - 23 September 2013
Sendai, Miyagi Museum of Art, Van Gogh in Paris. New perspectives, 26 May 2013 - 8 July 2013
Kyoto, Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, Van Gogh in Paris. New perspectives, 30 March 2013 - 19 May 2013
Seoul, Seoul Arts Center, Van Gogh in Paris. A dialogue with modernism, 4 November 2012 - 24 March 2013
Nagasaki, Huis ten Bosch (Japan), Van Gogh in Paris: new perspectives, 29 July 2012 - 28 October 2012
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Van Gogh te gast in het Rijksmuseum. Meesterwerken van het Van Gogh Museum, 19 September 1998 - 2 May 1999
Walther Vanbeselaere ; met een woord vooraf door Aug. Vermeylen, De hollandsche periode (1880-1885) in het werk van Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), 1937, p. 293 (269 verso), 344
Jan Hulsker, The new complete Van Gogh : paintings, drawings, sketches, 1996, p. 159
Ed. by E. van Uitert and M. Hoyle; with contrib. from H. van Crimpen ... [et al.], The Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, 1987, p. 319
Translation Ivonne Paternotte-Limburg, Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh Amsterdam : guide to the collection of paintings, 1979, [unpaged]
Ronald de Leeuw, Van Gogh Museum : schilderijen en pastels, 1993, p. 64-67
By J.B. de la Faille ; foreword by Charles Terrasse ; translated from the French by Prudence Montagu-Pollock, Vincent van Gogh, 1939, p. 90
Vorwort von J.B. de la Faille, Vincent van Gogh : Gemälde, 1928, vol. 1, p. 79, nr. 269 verso, vol. 2, pl. LXXIII
Foreword Gabriel White ; notes Alan Bowness, Vincent van Gogh : paintings and drawings from the collection of the Vincent van Gogh Foundation Amsterdam, p. 62
Louis van Tilborgh, Marije Vellekoop, Vincent van Gogh schilderijen : Nederlandse periode, 1881-1885 : Van Gogh Museum : 1, 1999, p. 84-105
J.B. de la Faille ; bijdragen van Abraham M. Hammacher en Jan G. van Gelder ; vert. van het artikel van A.M. Hammacher James Brockway, The works of Vincent van Gogh : his paintings and drawings, 1970, p. 106-107, 622