Paris, 1887

The record dates Italian Woman (Agostina Segatori) to 1887, the second Paris year, and names the sitter in the title. Named sitters are rare in this catalogue before Arles: the Paris years are overwhelmingly self-portraits, city views and still lifes, and the sustained portraiture of other people begins with the run of Roulin family portraits dated 1888 and 1889.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 81 x 60 cm and is held by the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. The measured palette resolves to yellow as the dominant family, in a year when yellow becomes the most common dominant in the catalogue for the first time.

A second Paris canvas with a café in the title

The catalogue also holds Woman in the "Cafe Tambourin", dated 1887 and held by the Van Gogh Museum. Both are portraits of women, both from the same year, both in Paris. Whether they show the same person is not something the record states, and this catalogue does not assert it. What the record does support is narrower: in his second Paris year, before leaving for the south, van Gogh painted seated single figures at close range, at a size he had not used for portraits since the peasant heads of Nuenen.