a certain assurance that one is doing a reasonable thing, like the farmer who drives his plow... (one who) drags the harrow behind himself. If one hasn't a horse, one is one's own horse." To depicting the essence of the life of the peasant and their spirit, Van Gogh lived as they lived, he was in the fields as they were, enduring the weather or long hours as they were. To do so was not something taught in schools, he noted, and became frustrated by traditionalists who focused on technique more so than the nature of the people being captured. So thoroughly engaged in living the peasant lifestyle, his appearance and manner of speech began to separate himself from others, but this was a cost he believed he needed to bear for his artistic development. Portrait of a Woman in Blue Portrait of a Woman with Red Ribbon Portrait of an Old Man with Beard Van Gogh described his sitter for this painting a "wonderful old man." It was made in Antwerp where Van Gogh hoped to bring in money to support himself by painting portraits. Sien Van Gogh made a series of paintings of Sien Hoornik, a prostitute whom he met and took in when he lived at The Hague. Included in the series are works of Sien's daughter, Maria, her newborn son and her mother. Paris (1886–1888) Alexander Reid Agostina Segatori Van Gogh occasionally visited Café du Tambourin run by Agostina Segatori, the subject of this painting. Previously an artist's model to Manet and Corot and others, the Naples-born Agostina saved the money she earned working as a model and opened the Italian themed Café du Tambourin in 1885, which particularly catered to artists. The Italian Woman also called Le Italienne is "without doubt" Agostina Segatori, per the Musée d'Orsay. Van Gogh introduced elements of Japanese woodcut prints in this portrait. Van Gogh creates his own style of brushstroke from Impressionism and Pointillism, in this case a "criss-cross of overlapping nervous hatching. He uses red and green in her face which he later described as a technique "to be able to express the terrible passions of humanity by means of red and green". Etienne-Lucien Martin The Portrait of Etienne-Lucien Martin was made of the owner of a restaurant in Paris. He allowed artists to exhibit their work. In November 1887 Van Gogh and his friends showed their works;