Head of a Woman (KM 111.262)

This 1885 study of a woman's head belongs to the intensive series of peasant portraits Van Gogh made at Nuenen — close-focus studies of faces that were preparation for the larger figure compositions of that period. Each head in this series represents a sustained act of looking: Van Gogh described his peasant subjects to Theo as people whose faces bore the marks of their labor, and his dark, earthen palette honors that hard physical reality. The Kröller-Müller Museum holds numerous works from the Nuenen period, forming one of the most complete records of this crucial phase in Van Gogh's development.

The head is modeled in Van Gogh's characteristic Nuenen palette of dark earths — raw umber, dark green, and ochre — applied with direct, confident brushwork. The face emerges from the dark background through careful value differentiation rather than academic tonal transition. The paint surface has physical weight appropriate to the subject.