Lot Essay
Van Gogh had done many studies of heads in The Hague during 1882-1883, and after painting a series of landscapes and interiors, he returned to portraiture in late 1884 while he was staying in Nuenen.
The model in the present study is a young unidentified woman whom Hulsker has called 'Model H' (op. cit., pp. 138 and 140). She resembles Sien de Groot, who appears as the younger woman in The Potato Eaters (Hulsker, no. 734; coll. Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterloo), and may have been related to her. In Van Gogh's portrait studies of this period.
"The characterization of the heads is very well done, but what is most noteworthy is that he has done things entirely his own way; he is not seeking a romantic idealization of the subjects, but rather a forceful and realistic rendering of them, a striving that in a few months would find its culmination in the famous The Potato Eaters." (J. Hulsker, op. cit., p. 136)
The model in the present study is a young unidentified woman whom Hulsker has called 'Model H' (op. cit., pp. 138 and 140). She resembles Sien de Groot, who appears as the younger woman in The Potato Eaters (Hulsker, no. 734; coll. Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterloo), and may have been related to her. In Van Gogh's portrait studies of this period.
"The characterization of the heads is very well done, but what is most noteworthy is that he has done things entirely his own way; he is not seeking a romantic idealization of the subjects, but rather a forceful and realistic rendering of them, a striving that in a few months would find its culmination in the famous The Potato Eaters." (J. Hulsker, op. cit., p. 136)