Hand-painted in oil
About this Artwork
The first blue in the catalogue
The record dates Head of a Peasant Woman with Dark Cap to 1885, and the measured palette reads as blue. That single word makes this entry the earliest blue reading in the whole catalogue: no work dated before 1885 returns blue as a dominant family, and one dated 1885 does — this one.
What the record gives
The work is held by the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, one of sixteen entries there dated 1885. No dimensions are recorded, so no measurement of scale is quoted.
What follows it
From this point the family climbs steadily: three works dated 1886, seven dated 1887, twenty-six dated 1888, which is its single-year peak, then twelve in 1889 and ten in 1890 — fifty-nine across the 610 works in total. A first occurrence only means something if the series after it is counted, and here it is. The reading itself is a measurement of which family covers most of the catalogue image, not a judgement about the picture, and it should not be read as one. This is a peasant head from the last Nuenen year that happens to sit at the start of a ten-year curve, and the record permits exactly that much to be said.
Sources
4 references- Vincent van Gogh — Wikipedia
Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləɱ vɑŋ ˈɣɔx] ; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he c
- Head of a Peasant Woman with Dark Cap — Wikidata
description: painting by Vincent van Gogh (Musee d'Orsay); inception: 1885-03; dimensions: 38.3 × 26 cm; collection: Musée d'Orsay
- Peasant Character Studies (Van Gogh series) — Wikipedia
Peasant Character Studies is a series of works that Vincent van Gogh made between 1881 and 1885. Van Gogh had a particular attachment and sympathy for peasants and other working class people that was fueled in several ways. He was particula
- Van gogh head of a peasant woman with dark cap f138 — Wikimedia Commons
High-resolution image of the work, hosted on Wikimedia Commons.
