A one-word title, in the Paris period

The record dates Skull to 1887, the second Paris year. Four titles in this catalogue contain the word skull: one dated 1885, one dated 1886, and two dated 1887. Two of the four pair the subject with a burning cigarette; a third names a skull cap and is a portrait, which is the sort of collision a catalogue built on title words has to sort out by hand rather than by rule.

What the record gives

The work is held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds thirty-four of the ninety-five works dated 1887. No dimensions are recorded. The measured palette reads as yellow.

Yellow, by 1887

Yellow dominates fifty-six of the ninety-five works dated 1887. In 1885 the count was twenty-six of seventy and in 1884 six of twenty-five; by 1888 it is ninety-three of 135. The family becomes the ordinary reading of the catalogue during the Paris years, which is why a yellow measurement on a studio subject from 1887 says more about the date than about the subject. The record carries no note on why this study was made, and none is invented.