Portrait of a Lady with Red Hair Band

Among the dozens of peasant heads Van Gogh painted in Nuenen between 1884 and 1885, this portrait of an anonymous young woman with a red hair band represents his determination to record the individual character of rural Brabant life before it was erased by modernisation. He had written to Theo about his admiration for Courbet's willingness to paint plain faces without flattery, and for Rembrandt's ability to find profound character in the faces of common people. The systematic practice of painting these heads — sometimes at the rate of three or four per week — was both preparation for The Potato Eaters, which required confident figure painting in multiple poses, and an end in itself: a democratic social portrait of a specific Dutch village at a specific historical moment. The red hair band is one of the few accents of bright colour in this otherwise sombre series, a small vivid detail that personalises a figure who would otherwise be a type. The painting's current location is unknown.

The portrait is painted in the dark, tonally constrained palette of Van Gogh's Dutch period — browns, ochres, and deep greens — but the red hair band provides a focal point of warm colour. Brushwork is deliberate and searching rather than fluid, the face modelled with cross-hatched strokes that give the skin a rough, physical presence.