Still Life with Straw Hat

This 1885 Nuenen still life with a straw hat, held at the Kröller-Müller Museum, belongs to Van Gogh's Dutch-period study of humble everyday objects treated with the full seriousness of the still-life genre. He would paint straw hats again in his Paris period — they appear in self-portraits and several still lifes as accessories associated with outdoor work and painting excursions — but this Nuenen version connects the object more directly to the peasant world he was documenting. The straw hat was working-class outdoor wear, associated with agricultural labour and with the plein-air painter working in open fields, and its modest presence in a Nuenen still life is consistent with Van Gogh's deliberate rejection of more conventional or prestigious still-life subjects. The Kröller-Müller Museum, with its extraordinary concentration of Van Gogh works from multiple periods, preserves this as evidence of the continuity of his democratic approach to subject matter across his entire career.

The pale straw of the hat is rendered in short, light strokes of yellow and cream, set against a more saturated background. The composition is informal, with objects placed at slight diagonals rather than orthogonally. The handling is loose and rapid, suggesting a quick notation rather than a laboured studio composition.