Portrait of a Lady with Red Hair Band

Painted in Nuenen in 1885, this portrait of an anonymous peasant woman belongs to Van Gogh's intensive study of the rural workers and villagers around the village where his father was the local Protestant minister. The red hair band is a small but vivid accent in an otherwise sombre palette, reflecting Van Gogh's training of his eye on the details of costume and bearing that distinguish individual characters within a social type. He drew and painted scores of Nuenen villagers at this time, driven by the same humanist impulse that led him to admire Millet and Courbet.

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.