Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch has bought the painting ‘Head of a Woman’ by Vincent van Gogh. The museum is paying €8,600,000 for the artwork that the painter made in Nuenen. It is a portrait of farmer’s daughter Gordina de Groot.
The painting ‘Kop van een vrouw’ (woman’s head) was part of private collections for about 120 years. When the work was auctioned in 2023, a British art collector immediately outbid the museum in Den Bosch. He bought it for €6,350,000, NOS (Dutch broadcasting corporation) reports.
Collection
‘Kop van een vrouw’ is already on display at Noordbrabants Museum. They currently have it on loan from the owner. The museum had wanted to buy the artwork for a long time. The first €6,000,000 were collected from funds, subsidies and a contribution from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
The museum started a fundraising campaign for the last €2,600,000. According to the museum, about three thousand people made a donation for the purchase, reaching €8,600,000. The painting is also called the Mona Lisa of Brabant.
Preliminary study
Van Gogh painted Gordina in the spring of 1885. This was during his Brabant period in Nuenen, as a preliminary study for ‘De aardappeleters‘ (‘the potato eaters’). The woman can also be seen in this work. In addition, there are thirteen similar paintings, eight of which are in the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam and five in Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo.
Noordbrabants Museum itself already has eleven ‘Brabant’ Van Goghs on display, director Jacqueline Grandjean says. “For the people of Brabant, ‘Kop van een vrouw‘ is not only a qualitatively beautiful work, but it also has a very deep meaning for people”. The museum plans to have the painting go on tour to other museums in Brabant.
Source: Studio040
Translated by: Bob
