GOGH, Vincent van
(b. 1853, Groot Zundert, d. 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise)

Head of a Young Peasant with a Peaked Cap

March-May 1885, Nuenen
Oil on canvas, 39 x 31 cm
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Catalogue numbers: F 163, JH 687.

In December 1884 van Gogh set himself the task of painting and drawing a large series of portraits of the peasants in Brabant. In this group of works he did not want to portray individuals but sought to characterize a type: the peasant. Rather than seeking beauty, he was looking for models that had rough, flat faces with low foreheads and thick lips. He regarded the series as preparation for multi-figure, large-scale compositions that he planned to paint afterwards.

In the present painting the man depicted from the front appears against a dark background, his figure fills almost the whole canvas. He wears a dark brown working jacket and a brown peaked cap. The young man bears an uncanny resemblance to the figure in profile wearing a peaked cap on the left of The Potato Eaters.




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