Van Gogh preferred working from real, available people over professional models throughout his career. An early instance of the pattern comes from Nuenen in the winter of 1884 to 1885, when he raised his ambitions from thirty painted heads to fifty and had models arrive almost every morning at his studio, men and women he could pay or persuade to sit. He worked fast, laying the darkest colours first and adding lighter tones wet into wet before the light failed, relying on his eye rather than a preparatory drawing^[1].

In Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh spent his final weeks in 1890, he is described as working with unprecedented energy, painting nearly every day. Alongside the landscapes that dominate this period, he turned repeatedly to the people around him: Dr Gachet, who became a friend, Gachet's nineteen-year-old daughter shown at the piano, the daughter of the Ravoux family who ran the inn where he took a small room, and countrywomen from the village whenever one agreed to sit^[2][3].

Across this body of late portraits, what draws attention is generally the handling of paint rather than any documentary record of who the sitter was. The same broken, expressive brushwork Van Gogh applied to his landscapes carries into these faces, built up quickly and without much revision, so that the picture reads first as a study in colour and touch and only second as a record of an individual.