Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

March 30–September 7, 2025

Only U.S. venue for exhibition co-organized with the Van Gogh Museum

In 1888 and 1889, during his stay in Arles, in the South of France, Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) forged a cherished friendship with a neighboring family: postman Joseph Roulin; his wife, Augustine; and their three children: Armand, Camille, and Marcelle. During this pivotal time in his life, Van Gogh created 26 intimate portrayals of the working-class family.

Organized in partnership with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits is the first exhibition devoted to the artist’s deep connection to the family and the making of their portraits. Featuring 23 works by Van Gogh—including 14 of the Roulin portraits—as well as earlier Dutch art and Japanese woodblock prints that inspired him, the exhibition includes iconic works from the MFA’s collection alongside more than 20 key loans from prominent international collections. The exhibition presents 10 letters from Joseph Roulin to Van Gogh and the artist’s siblings together for the first time, offering an intimate and tender look at their friendship. This selection of works provides new insights into Van Gogh’s world and yearning for meaningful connection as he moved to a new city and found himself at a turning point in his life and work.

“The exhibition gives visitors the opportunity to see the full flowering of Van Gogh’s artistic aspirations and the intensity of his focus—a clarity that may have emerged, in part, because of his very deep bonds with the postman and his family,” said Matthew Teitelbaum, Ann and Graham Gund Director. “It tells a new and compelling story of Van Gogh’s emotional and artistic search to make connection to a family who helped guide his last years.”

The exhibition is co-curated by Katie Hanson, William and Ann Elfers Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe, at the MFA and Nienke Bakker, Senior Curator at the Van Gogh Museum.

“It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with Nienke Bakker on this exhibition dedicated to friendship, family, and connection,” said Hanson. “It features not only Van Gogh’s depictions of the Roulin family, but also works attending to his thinking about those portraits. The MFA’s Roulin portraits are beloved icons of the collection—so part of our aim in this exhibition is to slow down, look more closely, and feel deeply with these magnificent works of art by foregrounding the human story behind them.”

Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits is on view at the MFA from March 30 through September 7, 2025 in the Ann and Graham Gund Gallery. Timed-entry tickets, which include general admission, are required for all visitors and can be reserved on mfa.org or purchased at the Museum. Member Preview takes place March 26–29. Following the MFA’s presentation, the exhibition will travel to the Van Gogh Museum, where it will be on view from October 3, 2025, through January 11, 2026.

Exhibition Overview

The exhibition is organized in thematic sections, tracing Van Gogh’s friendship with the Roulins, his admiration for his predecessors, his attempt to create a community of fellow artists, and his emotional ties to his supportive family and friends.

The first section, “Sense of Place: The Yellow House in Arles,” provides an immersive look at Arles, where the artist lived from February 1888 to April 1889, and the dwelling he rented in May 1888 to use first as a studio and then as a home. An 1887 self-portrait, completed in Paris as Van Gogh was making plans to move south, radiates the ambition and enthusiasm of the painter as he envisioned a new life in Arles. A map of the town orients visitors along with The Yellow House (The Street) (1888), the artist’s colorful depiction of his home and studio where the Roulin family posed for their portraits. A schematic construction of Van Gogh’s studio within this first gallery provides a sense of scale for visitors of the cozy space in which the artist worked.
Although Van Gogh thought it would be easier to find models and make contacts in Arles than in Paris, even after four months whole days went by without him exchanging a word with anyone. In summer 1888, Van Gogh and Joseph Roulin shared drinks at a café and a deep friendship began—and with it, the opportunity for Van Gogh to practice painting people, something he thought brought out the best in him. “The Postman and Portrait Practice,” a section dedicated to Van Gogh’s best friend in Arles, includes the artist’s earliest depiction of him, the MFA’s Postman Joseph Roulin (1888), as well as two drawings of Roulin. The section is supplemented with portraits by 17th-century Dutch artists from which he drew inspiration, such as Merry Drinker (about 1628–30) by Frans Hals (1582/83–1666) and Portrait of a Family in an Interior (1654) by Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1684), as well as lithographs by Honoré Daumier (French, 1808–1879).
After completing his first painting of Joseph Roulin in summer 1888, Van Gogh would go on to create a suite of 26 portraits of the five Roulin family members by April 1889. In addition to painting Joseph and Augustine Roulin, he painted their children: three solo portraits each of Armand, Camille, and Marcelle. In the third section, “The Roulin Family,” the entire family is portrayed across four canvases encircling the visitor. A large series of works devoted to the members of a single working-class family is unique not only in Van Gogh’s oeuvre, but also highly unusual in the history of art, suggesting the satisfaction he felt in creating these portraits was both personal and professional.
Van Gogh’s Roulin family portraits were a creative amalgamation of close observation of his beloved friends and of other sources of inspiration. “Creating Community through Art” highlights Van Gogh’s artistic influences, from Japanese printmakers like Toyohara Kunichika and Utagawa Kunisada to Dutch artists including Hals and Rembrandt (1606–1669). This section also situates Van Gogh within the artistic community of his time, featuring works by artist friends Émile Bernard (1868–1941) and Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), the latter of whom shared his Yellow House in Arles for two months in late 1888.
After an argument with Gauguin in December 1888, Van Gogh cut his left ear and was hospitalized. Joseph Roulin visited the artist in the hospital and wrote several letters to Van Gogh’s family, updating them on his condition. Roulin also wrote to Van Gogh for months after the artist pursued residential care in the psychiatric hospital at Saint-Rémy. “Letters from the Postman” presents 10 of these letters, offering an intimate look at the relationship between the artist and his friend.
“Observation and Inspiration” explores how Van Gogh found great potential for art in the people and places around him—starting with what he saw and modifying it to bring forth profound depth of feeling. In addition to the dedicated portraits of Augustine Roulin, Van Gogh included her features in other paintings including The Dance Hall in Arles (1888) and The Raising of Lazarus (after Rembrandt) (1890). A similar combination of vision and imagination characterizes the landscapes Ravine (1889) and Enclosed Field with Ploughman (1889) from the MFA’s collection that Van Gogh painted in Saint-Rémy.
In the final section, “Enduring Legacy: Beyond Arles,” the exhibition comes full circle – ending as it began, with the artist’s own image and a cherished place. Here, visitors encounter Self-Portrait (1889) and The Bedroom (1889), both painted in autumn 1889 in the hospital in Saint-Rémy, as Van Gogh reminisced about his time in Arles a year prior when he focused on the portraits of the Roulin family. Photographs of the Roulins, taken later in their lives, are featured, allowing visitors to see the individuals behind the portraits. The exhibition—and this section especially—explores how the Roulin family, and Van Gogh himself, were immortalized through his art.
The exit foyer of the exhibition serves as a community space for visitors to write and color postcards of the MFA’s Postman and enjoy reading a children’s book and the exhibition’s catalogue. Visitors can also learn more about Van Gogh’s techniques with tactile 3-D prints of detail areas from Van Gogh’s Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse). MFA conservators partnered with Canon Production Printing Canada Inc. and Canon Production Printing Netherlands B.V. to generate the prints, using photogrammetry to create a digital 3-D model of areas from the painting.

Exhibition Collaborators

The MFA’s presentation of Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits has been shaped by input from a cohort of local artists, social workers, poets, and community leaders organized through Table of Voices, the Museum’s initiative for embedding community perspectives into exhibitions. This cohort explored Van Gogh’s quest for belonging and connection, expanding how audiences think about friendship, family, and community. The group included Anthony Febo, Reid Flynn, Rev. Dr. Stephanie May, Quandre McGhee, Marla McLeod, Genaro Ortega, Heather Ross, and Angela Soo Hoo.

Conservation

In preparation for the exhibition, MFA conservators were given an unprecedented amount of time to examine Van Gogh’s Postman Joseph Roulin and Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse) from the MFA’s collection. The portrait of Augustine Roulin yielded particularly compelling insights about how the painting was made and how it has changed over time.

With digital manipulation, it is now possible to envision what some of Van Gogh’s paintings would have looked like at the time they were painted. Visitors can learn more about these discoveries in the MFA’s Conservation Center located on the third floor of the Museum and through an in depth video on mfa.org.

Publication

Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits is accompanied by a catalogue from MFA Publications. Relying on archival material, contemporary criticism, and technical studies, the catalogue features insightful essays on Van Gogh’s practice, beliefs about portraiture, his personal relationship with the Roulins, and his admiration for his contemporaries as well as 17th-century Dutch portraitists, as well as full translations of the 10 letters written by Joseph Roulin to Van Gogh and his family.

Images

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Postman Joseph Roulin 1889 France Oil on canvas Gift of Robert Treat Paine, 2nd

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse) 1889 France Oil on canvas Bequest of John T. Spaulding

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Enclosed Field with Ploughman December 1888 Arles Oil on canvas Bequest of Keith McLeod

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Marcelle Roulin November–December 1888 Arles Oil on canvas Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Camille Roulin 1888 Arles Oil on canvas Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin1888 Arles Oil on canvas Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest from the Collection of Maurice Wertheim, Class of 1906

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) The Postman Joseph Roulin 1888 Arles Ink and graphite on paper Los Angeles County Museum of Art, George Gard De Sylva Collection

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Madame Roulin and Her Baby 1888 Arles Oil on canvas Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.231)

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Madame Augustine Roulin and Baby Marcelle 1888 Arles Oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Bequest of Lisa Norris Elkins, 1950

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Camille Roulin 1888 Arles Oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee, 1973

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Self-Portrait 1889 St. Rémy Oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1998.74.5

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Portrait of Joseph Roulin 1889 Arles Oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Rosenberg, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Mr. and Mrs. Armand P. Bartos, The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection, Mr. and Mrs. Werner E. Josten, and Loula D. Lasker Bequest (all by exchange), 1989

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) Portrait of Joseph Roulin 1888 Reed and quill pen and brown ink, over black chalk The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890) The Schoolboy (The Postman's Son - Boy in Cap) 1888 Oil on canvas Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand Doação (Gift) Seabra Cia. de Tecidos, Anderson-Clayton and Co., Egídio Câmara, Mário de Almeida, Usineiros do Nordeste, Geremia Lunardelli, Alberto Soares Sampaio, Cia. Souza Cruz, Guilherme Guinle, Francisco Pignatari, Cia. Siderúrgica Belgo-Mineira S.A., Louis Ensch, Jules Verelst, Cápua & Cápua S.A., 1952 Asian Private Collection

Wall Text and Labels

Van Gogh in France

In Vincent van Gogh’s time, the train journey from Paris, where the artist had been staying with his brother Theo, to Arles took about fifteen hours. We do not know why Van Gogh decided to move to this particular town in Provence, but the slower pace of life and lower cost of living in southern France were likely appealing, as were the brighter sunlight and warmer weather.

SECTION 1: SENSE OF PLACE: THE YELLOW HOUSE IN ARLES

I can’t, suffering as I do, do without something greater than myself, which is my life, the power to create.

And if frustrated in this power physically, we try to create thoughts instead of children; in that way, we’re part of humanity all the same. [...]

Ah, the portrait — the portrait with the model’s thoughts and soul — it so much seems to me that it must come.

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 3 September 1888

Introduction

Vincent van Gogh yearned for meaningful connection.
When he arrived in the town of Arles in southern France in 1888, Van Gogh was in his mid-thirties and had abandoned several professions, including teaching, preaching, and working for an art dealer and a bookseller. He was nearly eight years into his career as an artist, and he found himself at a turning point in his life and his work. He believed that his long-cherished dream to become a husband and a father might not be realized, and he had new ambitions for creating community and art.

“What I’m most passionate about, much much more than all the rest in my profession—is the portrait, the modern portrait,” Van Gogh wrote. “I would like to do portraits which would look like apparitions to people a century later. So I don’t try to do us by photographic resemblance but by our passionate expressions, using as a means of expression and intensification of the character our science and modern taste for color.”

In Arles, this passion resulted in an astonishing series of portraits of his new friends, the Roulin family. Van Gogh would ultimately create more than two dozen paintings and drawings of the postman Joseph Roulin, his wife Augustine, and their three children, in which he aimed to express something about “the model’s thoughts and soul” and simultaneously about humanity more broadly.

This exhibition traces Van Gogh’s friendship with this modest family, his admiration for his predecessors with whom he saw a long artistic connection, his attempt to create a community of fellow artists, and his emotional ties to his supportive family and friends. It is a story of resilience and of the tender bonds between people that bring life greater meaning.

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Self-Portrait, 1887 Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]

I have a dirty and difficult occupation, painting, and if I weren’t as I am I wouldn’t paint, but being as I am I often work with pleasure, and I see the possibility glimmering through of making paintings in which there’s some youth and freshness, although my own youth is one of those things I’ve lost. [...] It’s my plan to go to the south for a while, as soon as I can, where there’s even more color and even more sun.

But what I hope to achieve is to paint a good portrait.

Van Gogh to Willemien van Gogh, Paris, late October 1887

Painted in Paris, where Van Gogh was living with his younger brother Theo, this self-portrait shows the artist as he was making plans to move south. The bold brushstrokes and serious demeanor radiate the ambition and enthusiasm of the painter, as he envisioned his new goals. Van Gogh’s arrangement with his brother, who worked for art dealers in Paris, was that in exchange for his artwork, Theo would send art supplies and cover his sibling’s costs of living in Arles.

Van Gogh often portrayed himself when he had no one else to pose for him. It was a means to practice figuration and a chance for self-reflection, but also a part of a venerable tradition—artists he revered, such as fellow Dutchman Rembrandt van Rijn, repeatedly turned to the mirror and shared themselves through their art in this intimate way.

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. Gift of Philip L. Goodwin in memory of his mother, Josephine S. Goodwin

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Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

The Yellow House (The Street), 1888 Oil on canvas

Van Gogh rented the Yellow House in Arles in May 1888, using the front room as his studio, but he did not live there until September, as he took time to furnish and decorate the rooms to be a welcoming home. His bedroom upstairs appears here with closed shutters. Next door, with a pink awning, is a grocery store and further to the left a restaurant where he often dined. In the distance to the right are railway bridges leading to the train station. Van Gogh wrote to Theo: “Now I dare say people here would jump at portraits. But, before daring to take the risk of throwing myself into that, I want my nervous system to calm down first, and then I want to be settled in such a way that we can receive people at the studio.”

Van Gogh’s Studio

QUOTE [for back wall in the kitchen space]

And the studio—the red floor tiles, the white walls and ceiling, the rustic chairs, the pale wooden table, with, I hope, portraits as decoration. That will have character à la Daumier—and it won’t, I dare predict, be commonplace.

Now I’m going to ask you to look for some Daumier lithographs for the studio, and some Japanese prints [...]

I really want to make of it—an artist’s house, but not precious, on the contrary, nothing precious, but everything from the chair to the painting having character.

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 9 September 1888

The Yellow House survived until World War II, when it was demolished following a bomb strike in 1944. Fortunately, its appearance and scale are still known, thanks to Van Gogh’s painting and letters, vintage postcards, and a floorplan. This schematic construction represents his studio in its square footage and ceiling height. Behind the studio was a small kitchen.

Imagine an artist (or two—a reality discussed later in the exhibition) with easel and paints, working from a model who might have family members in tow, and you can see how the space was quite cozy, if not uncomfortably cramped. Yet this is where all of the members of the Roulin family posed for their portraits.

QUOTE [inside the studio space]

In the evening especially, with the gaslight, I like the look of the studio very much....
And I believe that in the evening we’ll bring neighbors and friends here, and that in the evening we’ll work as in the daytime, chatting as we do so.
Portraits of people lit by gaslight—that always seems to me a thing to do.

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 27 or 28 October 1888

SECTION 2: THE POSTMAN AND PORTRAIT PRACTICE

Although Van Gogh lived on the same street as the Roulin family from February to May 1888, he first mentioned the postman—who sorted mail at the railway station—in a late July letter. Van Gogh and the Roulins had moved farther apart from one another by then. The two men shared drinks at a café and a friendship began. The café’s owner commented that Van Gogh and Roulin were like brothers, with their shared features (reddish-brown hair and pale eyes) and frequent companionship. At this very time, Roulin’s pregnant wife Augustine had gone to her parents’ home with the couple’s sons, Armand and Camille, to deliver their daughter, Marcelle. Work prevented Joseph from joining them, so he had time to socialize and then to pose for the artist.

For many artists, painting portraits on commission was a good way to make money. Without such a market, Van Gogh painted portraits for his own purposes, compensating sitters for their time. Rather than collecting a fee for posing, Roulin enjoyed food and drink as reimbursement. Van Gogh wrote to Theo at this time: “There’s no better or shorter way to improve my work than to do figures. Also, I always feel confidence when doing portraits, knowing that that work is much more serious—that’s perhaps not the word—but rather is the thing that enables me to cultivate what’s best and most serious in me.” He was looking at people around him for inspiration but was also drawing upon

portraits by 17th-century Dutch painters like Frans Hals, Rembrandt van Rijn, and Adriaen van Ostade that he had seen in museums and remembered fondly.

[Floating quotation]

Besides, a painted portrait is a thing of feeling made with love or respect for the being represented. What remains to us of the old Dutchmen? The portraits.

Van Gogh to Willemien van Gogh, 19 September 1889

[Floating quotation]

I’m trying to make you see the great simple thing, the painting of humanity, let’s rather say of a whole republic, through the simple medium of the portrait.

Van Gogh to Émile Bernard, 30 July 1888

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Postman Joseph Roulin, 1888 Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]

I’m now working on the portrait of a postman with his dark blue uniform with yellow.

A head something like that of Socrates, almost no nose, a high forehead, bald pate, small grey eyes, high-colored full cheeks, a big beard, pepper and salt, big ears. The man is a fervent republican and socialist, reasons very well and knows many things. His wife gave birth today and so he’s in really fine feather and glowing with satisfaction. [...] I hope I’ll also get to paint the baby born today.

Van Gogh to Willemien van Gogh, 31 July 1888

This is Van Gogh’s first portrait of Joseph Roulin, aged forty-seven, whose firm gaze and open posture combine with the artist’s lively brushwork to create the impression of immediacy. There is a profound sense of presence and proximity—imagine the two men just a few feet apart as Van Gogh painted his new friend. A smudge under the postman’s left arm interrupts the chair’s shape and reminds us that the artist was working rapidly to create this portrait. Van Gogh complained that Roulin became too stiff while posing, which is perhaps evident in the artist’s subtle reshaping of the sleeve and slight awkwardness in the placement of the hands and arms.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Robert Treat Paine, 2nd, 1935 35.1982

The Chair in which Van Gogh Portrayed Roulin

Archival photo
Van Gogh Museum (Tralbaut archive)

Frans Hals

Dutch, 1582/83–1666

Merry Drinker, about 1628–30 Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]:

What particularly struck me when I saw the old Dutch paintings again is that they were usually painted quickly. That these great masters Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael—so many others—as far as possible just put it straight down—and didn’t come back to it so very much.

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 13 October 1885

Van Gogh was truly enamored with the art of Frans Hals, which he wrote about repeatedly in his letters both before and during the making of the Roulin portraits. He marveled at the subtle play of colors in the Merry Drinker as well as Hals’s bravura brushwork and clearly had this painting in mind as he began work on his first portrait of the postman. Van Gogh referred to Joseph Roulin as a drinker in many of his letters, noting the high color of his face, and included a glass on the table next to him in one of his drawings (on view nearby).

Loan from the Rijksmuseum

Frans Hals

Dutch, 1582/83–1666

Willem van Heythuysen

Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]

Let’s talk about Frans Hals. [...] He painted portraits; nothing nothing nothing but that. [...] he did portraits of good citizens with their families, the man, his wife, his child; he painted the tipsy drinker, [...] babies in swaddling-clothes, the gallant, bon vivant gentleman, mustachioed, booted and spurred [...]. It’s beautiful like Zola, and healthier and more cheerful, but just as alive, because his epoch was healthier and less sad. Now what is Rembrandt? The same thing entirely—a painter of portraits.

Van Gogh to Émile Bernard, 30 July 1888

The “tipsy drinker” Van Gogh recalled is certainly Hals’s Merry Drinker (hanging nearby) and the “gallant, bon vivant gentleman, mustachioed, booted and spurred” is very likely this portrait of Willem van Heythuysen. The artist visited the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels on at least two occasions and had an extraordinary memory for artworks he admired. The day after writing to fellow artist Émile Bernard (1868–1941) about Hals and portraiture, Van Gogh began his first painting of Joseph Roulin (hanging in this room), so 17th-century Dutch precedents were almost certainly on his mind. When Van Gogh complained that the postman became too stiff while posing, he may have had something akin to the casual nature of Hals’s sitter, tipping backward in his chair, in mind.

Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels

Honoré Daumier

French, 1808–1879

C'est tout d'même flatteur d'avoir son portrait à l'exposition (After all, it is rather flattering to have one’s portrait at the Salon), 1857
Lithograph

L'Absinthe, 1863 Lithograph, hand colored

[QUOTE]:

I’ve just made a portrait of a postman—or rather, two portraits even—Socratic type, no less Socratic for being something of an alcoholic, and with a high color as a result. His wife had just given birth, the good fellow was glowing with satisfaction. He’s a fierce republican, like père Tanguy. Goddamn, what a subject to paint à la Daumier, eh?

Van Gogh to Émile Bernard, 5 August 1888

Van Gogh repeatedly referred to Roulin as looking like a character from a Daumier print. Honoré Daumier was a prolific artist whose caricatures featured in newspapers and as separate sheets collected by admiring fans then and now, including Van Gogh. Daumier employs a similar upward tilt of the head in both scenes to convey intoxication, whether by pride over one’s portrait or by excess alcohol.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of William Perkins Babcock, 1900 00.1888.9, 00.1984.13

Adriaen van Ostade

Dutch, 1610–1684

Portrait of a Family in an Interior, formerly known as The Painter's Family, 1654 Oil on panel

Van Gogh greatly esteemed 17th-century Dutch portraits and at the outset of his project to paint the Roulin family, he wrote: “I claim that the Van Ostade in the Louvre, which shows the painter’s family, the man, the wife, the ten or so kids, is a painting infinitely deserving of study and thought.” Although Van Gogh never portrayed the Roulins all together in a single composition, as is typically done for a family portrait, it mattered a lot to him to portray the entire family, as a unit, across canvases.

Why didn’t Van Gogh paint all five Roulins together in a single composition? It may have been impractical for them to pose together, either in terms of coordinating schedules or because of the difficulty of finding an arrangement of their figures that suited the artist’s vision. Another possibility may be that Van Gogh preferred the up-close intimacy of portraits nearing life size; to join all five figures together at that scale would have necessitated an inconveniently large canvas for his studio (and his materials budget).

Paris, Musée du Louvre, Department of Paintings

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Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

The Postman Joseph Roulin, 1888 Ink and graphite on paper

Van Gogh sent this drawing to his brother Theo. In it, he elaborated the setting by including a drinking glass on the table. When Roulin first posed in late July, Van Gogh referred to him in a letter simply as “a postman,” but by the end of August the artist was sharing details of Roulin’s family in his correspondence with his own siblings. By year’s end, Roulin described himself as Van Gogh’s friend, even as a best friend.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, George Gard De Sylva Collection

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Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Joseph Roulin, 1888
Reed and quill pen and brown ink, over black chalk

This close-up drawing of Roulin, focusing on his face, became the format Van Gogh would use for all of his future paintings of the postman (such as one on view in the next room). It is at once tender and unflinching with its close proximity and frontal gaze. He sent this sheet to his artist friend John Peter Russell (1858–1930).

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Frans Hals

Dutch, 1582/83–1666

Portrait of a Young Man Holding a Pair of Gloves, about 1619 Oil on panel

Van Gogh revered Hals for his ability to capture an individual, while also conveying something more general about their place, time, and age. He also appreciated Hals’s keen use of color and loose brushwork, both in evidence here and in Van Gogh’s own work. Hals’s portrait of a young man shares with Van Gogh’s portrayal of the seventeen- year-old Armand (on view in the next room) a bold, fashionable hat and a slight turn toward us.

Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection

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SECTION 3: THE ROULIN FAMILY

Van Gogh made twenty-six portraits of the five members of the Roulin family, fourteen of which appear in this exhibition. In European art—the history of which the artist knew very well—such sustained artistic engagement with a family (other than one’s own) was typically reserved for those of the highest social standing, such as royalty. Creating multiple portraits of a modest, working-class family was otherwise unknown in the 19th century. It suggests the satisfaction Van Gogh felt in creating these portraits was both personal and professional.

For Van Gogh, it was not simply that willing models were difficult to find, though that was also true. He stated that “to my mind the same person supplies material for very diverse portraits.” In addition to depicting the same person in different ways, he repeated compositions to be able to keep one painting for himself, give one to the sitter as compensation for posing, and send others to his family (most often his brother) or to artist friends.

I’ve done the portraits of an entire family, the family of the postman whose head I did before—the man, his wife, the baby, the young boy and the 16-year-old son [he was actually 17] [...] You can sense how in my element that makes me feel, and that it consoles me to a certain extent for not being a doctor.

I hope to persevere with this and be able to obtain more serious sittings, which can be paid for with portraits. And if I manage to do this entire family even better, I’ll have done at least one thing to my taste and personal.

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 1 December 1888 *

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Madame Roulin and Her Baby, 1888 Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]

“And a baby in its cradle, also, if you look at it at your ease, has the infinite in its eyes.”

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 6 August 1888

This painting of Marcelle and her mother Augustine is one of just two double-portraits of Roulin family members, who are otherwise shown individually. Van Gogh portrays Marcelle with the warmth and exuberance of a newborn, full of life. Augustine is sketched in at the margin of the portrait. His attention to the child’s face focuses the portrait on her, but he also shows the bond between the two individuals, in the context of care and dependency. Van Gogh made five portraits of baby Marcelle and eight of Augustine.

Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975

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Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Armand Roulin, 1888 Oil on canvas

Van Gogh painted seventeen-year-old Armand, who had just begun to work as a blacksmith, three times. In this portrait, Armand’s slouched shoulders and nearly profile pose suggest moody withdrawal, conveying the presence of a young man on the cusp of adulthood.

Collection Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Acquired with the collection of D.G. Van Beuningen

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Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Camille Roulin, 1888 Oil on canvas

Van Gogh gave this tender portrait of Camille to the Roulin family. (He gave them one portrait of each family member.) In his sensitive portrayal of the rather shy looking eleven-year-old boy, he used large planes of contrasting colors, which he enlivened with short, rhythmic brushstrokes to create the effect of reflected light. The warm glow and yellow background in Camille’s portrait and in several others of his family members indicates that Van Gogh painted them by gaslight in his studio. In these works, the artist aimed to express the intimacy and coziness of a family in the evening. He painted two other portraits of Camille; both are displayed in the next room.

Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee, 1973

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Joseph Roulin, 1889 Oil on canvas

This iconic frontal depiction of Joseph Roulin was among the last portraits Van Gogh made of his dear friend. Of his six painted portraits of the postman, Van Gogh used this close-up format for all but the first one (the MFA’s painting displayed in the previous room). Bold floral backgrounds feature in several of Van Gogh’s portraits and, while they are likely his own invention, they resemble Provençal fabric designs, as well as Japanese woodblock prints and portraits by his artist friends Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin that likewise have large blossoms as portrait backdrops.

The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Rosenberg, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Mr. and Mrs. Armand P. Bartos, The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection, Mr. and Mrs. Werner E. Josten, and Loula D. Lasker Bequest (all by exchange), 1989 ___________________________________________________________________________________

SECTION 4: CREATING COMMUNITY THROUGH ART

Van Gogh described himself as “a link in the chain of artists.” He was intensely interested in artistic lineage, connecting himself with artists past, present, and future. He hoped that the Yellow House would be a welcoming place where sitters could pose for portraits and also a hub of an artist colony in Arles, a destination for artists seeking support and communal practice.

As a young man, Van Gogh had worked for an art dealer; his brother Theo would likewise take up that trade. The brothers collected art, especially prints, but also paintings by artists they knew. Van Gogh enjoyed visiting museums, sometimes pausing at length in front of a painting he admired and then sharing his experience in his letters. The Roulin family portraits were a creative amalgamation of the close observation of those cherished friends and the sources of inspiration that he remembered, absorbed, and transposed through his brush.

A SHARED STUDIO

Van Gogh dreamt of a communal studio where artists would join together and work “as family, as brothers and companions.” He realized that ambition for sixty-three days, from late October to late December 1888, when Paul Gauguin shared his Yellow House. It was a challenging time for both men. Van Gogh was a more accomplished artist and less in need of mentorship than Gauguin had imagined. They also had very different working practices. “I can’t work without a model,” admitted Van Gogh, who preferred to have a sitter or motif in front of him. Gauguin favored painting from memory and imagination, although he also worked from models. More than half of Van Gogh’s portraits of the Roulin family were painted during Gauguin’s stay, and sharing a studio also meant sharing sitters, including Augustine Roulin and her children.

[Floating quotation]

“My word, these anxieties... who can live in modern life without catching his share of them? The best consolation, if not the only remedy, is, it still seems to me, profound friendships.”

Van Gogh to Paul Signac, 10 April 1889

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse), 1889 Oil on canvas

Van Gogh painted Augustine Roulin in bold, exaggerated colors against a vividly patterned background. She holds a rope that leads to a cradle. At lower right, the painter inscribed the title La Berceuse, which means both “lullaby” and “she who rocks the cradle.” The Roulins had a baby at home, but Van Gogh also conceived of the action in a more general sense of offering comfort. He wrote to his brother that he would like to see this painting “in the cabin of a boat” where fishermen in “their melancholy isolation, exposed to all the dangers, alone on the sad sea...would experience a feeling of being rocked, reminding them of their own lullabies.”

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of John T. Spaulding, 1948 48.548

MFA Mobile on Bloomberg Connects stop: Watch a video with the curator and an MFA conservator discussing this painting.
You may also view this video in the Van Gogh display in the Robert and Carol Henderson Conservation Learning Center on the MFA’s third floor in the Linde Family Wing.

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Toyohara Kunichika

Japanese, 1835–1900

Peony (Botan): Actor Kawarazaki Sanshō (Gonjūrō I) as Danjūrō no Shichi, from the series Thirty-six Selected Flowers and Grasses (Sanjūrokkasō no uchi), 1865
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

Actors Bandō Shūka (Bandō Mitsugorō VI) and Ichimura Kakitsu IV in an Imagined Version of a Climactic Scene (?) in the Play Konezumi no Chūji (Mitate Konezumi no Chūji kyokuba), 1864
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

Van Gogh incorporated eye-catching floral or solid-color backgrounds in his painted portraits of himself and of Roulin family members, which find close resonance with those favored by Japanese printmakers he admired and whose work he collected. Although he did not own these two particular prints, he had others with similar features.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, 1911

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James McArdell

English, 1728 or 1729–1765

The Holy Family at Night, 1742–65 Mezzotint

11.44418, 11.21903

Several printmakers made reproductive prints after The Holy Family at Night, a painting in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum once attributed to Rembrandt and now credited to his workshop. Van Gogh hung an example of this print in his bedroom as a young man and again when he lived in The Hague in 1882. It informed his thinking about his portrait of Augustine Roulin as “La Berceuse.” The central figure here holds a rope that leads to the cradle below; this method of soothing a baby by rocking it is alluded to by the rope in Madame Roulin’s hands in Van Gogh’s portrait.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of William Perkins Babcock, 1900 00.1985

Rembrandt van Rijn

Dutch, 1606–1669

Aeltje Uylenburgh, 1632 Oil on panel

[QUOTE]
Gauguin and I talk a lot about Delacroix, Rembrandt, etc. The discussion is excessively electric. We sometimes emerge from it with tired minds, like an electric battery after it has run down. We have been right in the midst of magic [...] Rembrandt is above all a magician.

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 17 or 18 December 1888

Van Gogh held the work of Rembrandt in great regard, praising the magic and poetry that he could evoke in his paintings. Rembrandt’s portrayals of revered matriarchs, such as this one, likely helped shape Van Gogh’s approach to depicting Augustine Roulin. The serious demeanor and seated pose, slightly turned to her right, are conventional and shared by both artists for their sitters. Each woman has a commanding presence. Van Gogh wrote of his desire “To express the thought of a forehead through the radiance of a light tone on a dark background.” Though produced with a very different painterly touch, the luminosity of a thoughtful woman’s brow was achieved by both artists.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Promised gift of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, in support of the Center for Netherlandish Art

Émile Bernard

French, 1868–1941

The Artist's Grandmother, 1887 Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]

I don’t believe that this question of the Dutchmen, which we’re discussing these days, is without interest. It’s quite interesting to consult them when it’s a matter of any kind of virility, originality, naturalism. In the first place, I must speak to you again about yourself, about two still lifes that you’ve done, and about the two portraits of your grandmother. Have you ever done anything better, have you ever been more yourself, and someone? [...] You’ve never been closer to Rembrandt, my dear chap, than then.

Van Gogh to Émile Bernard, on or about 5 August 1888

Émile Bernard’s grandmother ran her own laundry business and supported Bernard’s artistic career despite his parents’ disapproval. She even had a studio built for him around the time this portrait was painted. The nineteen- year-old Bernard captured the solid presence of his grandmother in bold planes of color and a strong silhouette that resonate with the expressive portraits Van Gogh made of the Roulin family a year later. The older artist owned one of Bernard’s portraits of his grandmother (now in the Van Gogh Museum), while Bernard was the original owner of Van Gogh’s La Berceuse (the MFA’s painting on display to the right).

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Francis Welch Fund, 1961 61.165

Émile Bernard, Portrait of Bernard’s Grandmother, oil on canvas, 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0205V1962

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Jean-François Millet

French, 1814–1875

Winter Evening, 1867
Pastel and black conté crayon on gray-brown wove paper

Van Gogh deeply admired the work of Jean-François Millet, a painter of rural life and folk. He saw this pastel in Paris in 1875 and read about it in Alfred Sensier’s 1881 book on Millet. Sensier described this scene of a couple working by candlelight near their sleeping baby as having “a feeling, a light à la Rembrandt.” Sensier characterized Millet as “a melancholy and suffering soul, but he was above all a man with the courage of his convictions; [...] a courageous toiler, a loving father and a devoted friend.” This description probably was meaningful for Van Gogh, who painted several variations on compositions by Millet, including this one.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Quincy Adams Shaw through Quincy Adams Shaw, Jr., and Mrs. Marian Shaw Haughton, 1917 17.1520

Van Gogh, Evening (After Millet), 1889, oil on canvas. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

CHROMOLITHOGRAPHS

Alphabet comique (Comic Alphabet), 1880s Chromolithograph

Van Gogh described his painting La Berceuse (hanging nearby) as looking like a “chromolithograph from a penny bazaar.” He elaborated that the similarity had to do with the use of colors: “discordant sharps of garish pink, garish orange, garish green, are toned down by flats of reds and greens.” He also considered the audience: “it’s very true that the common people, who buy themselves chromos..., are vaguely in the right and perhaps more sincere than certain men-about-town who go to the Salon [the annual art exhibition in Paris].” The prominent outlines, strong colors, and looping font of these small chromolithographs represent the widely available and inexpensive prints familiar to Van Gogh. This particular alphabet was distributed both in the United States and in France in the 1880s.

Private Collection, MFA Staff Member

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Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Madame Augustine Roulin and Baby Marcelle, 1888 Oil on canvas

A close look at this painting’s surface reveals that Van Gogh started with a light blue background, akin to his first portrait of Joseph Roulin. This detail, along with the similarity in the size of the two paintings and their complementary compositions (husband and wife would turn toward each other if the works were hung together) suggests that the artist may have considered them a pair. This double-portrait of mother and child highlights Augustine’s role as caretaker. Van Gogh was exploring a fascinating middle ground between his sitter’s dominating presence in the later La Berceuse compositions and her marginal appearance in the double-portrait on view in the previous room. In all instances, her maternal role remains his focus.

Philadelphia Museum of Art: Bequest of Lisa Norris Elkins, 1950

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Paul Gauguin

French, 1848–1903

Sketches of Marcelle Roulin, page in the Carnet Huyghe, 1888–1901 Graphite and charcoal on lined ledger paper

Gauguin made these tender drawings of baby Marcelle in the Yellow House studio, as he and Van Gogh worked side-by-side. They convey the serenity of the robust infant held by her mother, also seen in Van Gogh’s paintings hanging nearby. These delicate portraits are a testament to the two artists’ close working relationship at this pivotal moment in their careers, and to the bonds of friendship between the Roulin family and Van Gogh, who was longing for community—of artists, of friends, and of family.

Gift of Sam Salz, New York, through the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Collection of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
B72.0043

Paul Gauguin

French, 1848–1903

Study Sheet with Portraits of Camille Roulin, 1888 Chalk on paper

The meek inquisitiveness suggested by the boy’s turned head and sidelong gaze in the portrait sketch with the yellow shirt resemble Van Gogh’s demure portrayals of the Roulin’s middle child against a yellow background. Gauguin’s central sketch incorporates Camille’s characteristic blue cap and gives three-dimensionality to his head through delicate shading, but his open mouth and vacant eyes are haunting.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

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Paul Gauguin

French, 1848–1903

Madame Roulin, 1888 Oil on canvas

Gauguin’s treatment of Augustine Roulin’s pose and garment in this portrait may have influenced Van Gogh’s portrayal of the same sitter for La Berceuse (on view nearby), or the two artists may have begun these works together during the same sitting in the Yellow House. The pale blue walls resemble Van Gogh’s initial choice for the painting hanging adjacent, and in both paintings, Augustine sits in what came to be known as Gauguin’s chair. Gauguin features another of his paintings, The Blue Trees, on the wall behind her.

Saint Louis Art Museum, Funds given by Mrs. Mark C. Steinberg

Paul Gauguin, The Blue Trees, 1888, oil on canvas. The Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen.

Vincent van Gogh, Gauguin’s Chair, 1888, oil on canvas. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Marcelle Roulin, 1888 Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]
“I want to do figures, figures and more figures, it’s stronger than me, this series of bipeds from the baby to Socrates.”
Van Gogh to Émile Bernard, 21 August 1888

From the time of Marcelle’s birth, which coincided with Van Gogh’s first portrait of her father, the artist was eager to paint the Roulins’ new baby. He first portrayed her held aloft by her mother on a larger canvas but sensitively selected a smaller one when it came time to portray Marcelle alone. Painting her was the realization of a goal, not just to paint an entire family, but all ages of humanity. Van Gogh gave this portrait of Marcelle to her proud parents.

Asian Private Collection

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Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Camille Roulin, 1888 Oil on canvas

This painting is a repetition—same size, shape, and composition—of the portrait of Camille in the previous room. Van Gogh painted repetitions for various reasons. In the case of a portrait, he could make a second one without needing the sitter to pose for him, as he could use the previous painting as his model instead. He was also able to make adjustments to the composition or brushwork to subtly refine or revise the portrait. Repetitions also increased the visibility of his artistic ideas. Van Gogh gave the first version to the Roulins and kept this one for about six months, perhaps as a decoration for the Yellow House, before sending it to his brother in Paris to be seen by artists, critics, and potential buyers.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin, 1888 Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]

I have a portrait of myself, all ash-colored....I looked more for the character of a bonze, a simple worshipper of the eternal Buddha. It cost me a good deal of trouble, but I’ll have to do it all over again if I want to express the thing. I’ll have to cure myself even further of the conventional numbness of our so-called civilized state, in order to have a better model for a better painting.

Van Gogh to Paul Gauguin, 3 October 1888

Van Gogh made this self-portrait in the midst of his preparations for Gauguin’s arrival. He was painting his portraits of the Roulin family, with which it shares features like the saturated single color radiating behind him and the somewhat exaggerated features depicting simultaneously an individual and a type. For Van Gogh, Joseph Roulin was a postal employee, a devoted father, and a man resembling Socrates. With a similar approach, he saw himself in this self-portrait as Vincent, an artist, and someone like a Buddhist monk. Deeply immersed in self-evaluation, Van Gogh was coming to the realization that he probably would not have a family of his own, unlike both Gauguin and Roulin.

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest from the Collection of Maurice Wertheim, Class of 1906

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Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

The Schoolboy (The Postman's Son—Boy in a Cap), 1888 Oil on canvas

The Schoolboy, posed by Camille Roulin, is both a portrait of a specific person and an embodiment of a social role or type, as was the case with his parents’ portraits in the guise of all-consoling mother and of government employee. This duality (individual and type) was something Van Gogh recognized and appreciated in portraits by Hals, like the nearby Fisherboy. The Schoolboy casually inhabits the artist’s chair, within his studio in the Yellow House. The two- tone background recalls the Japanese prints so admired by the painter.

Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand Doação (Gift) Seabra Cia. de Tecidos, Anderson-Clayton and Co., Egídio Câmara, Mário de Almeida, Usineiros do Nordeste, Geremia Lunardelli, Alberto Soares Sampaio, Cia. Souza Cruz, Guilherme Guinle, Francisco Pignatari, Cia. Siderúrgica Belgo-Mineira S.A., Louis Ensch, Jules Verelst, Cápua & Cápua S.A., 1952

Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh’s Chair, 1888, oil on canvas. National Gallery London. *

Frans Hals

Dutch, 1582/83–1666

Fisherboy

Oil on canvas

Van Gogh visited Antwerp on several occasions, including with his artist friend Anton Kerssemakers (1846–1924), who wrote that Van Gogh was transfixed by this painting: “Suddenly he’s gone from my side, and I see him walking up to the painting, and me after him. When I came up to him he was standing with hands folded as if in prayer in front of the painting and whispered: ‘God d ...; do you see that,’ he said after a while, ‘now that’s painting, look’ and following the direction of the broad strokes with his thumb: ‘he leaves it just as he puts it down’...”

Van Gogh’s creative mind returned often to works by Hals and never with greater focus than while painting the Roulin family. Camille Roulin (hanging nearby) shares Fisherboy’s tender immediacy and vibrant energy of youth.

Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp—Flemish Community

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Utagawa Kunisada I (Toyokuni III)

Japanese, 1786–1864

The Paulownia Crest (Gosan no kiri): (Actor Bandō Hikosaburō I as) Mashiba Hisayoshi, from the series Popular Matches for Thirty-six Selected Flowers (Tōsei mitate sanjūroku kasen), 1862
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

Van Gogh owned an impression of this Japanese print. General compositional elements, like the placement of the figure within the picture plane and the bands of background color, resonate with his Schoolboy. Closer examination of the print reveals subtle variations in the surface—areas of smooth, flat color are offset by patterns of texture (within the band of white at lower left, for example). Van Gogh, likewise, thoughtfully varied his brushstrokes creating textures and patterns, as well as broad flat areas that enliven his portraits’ surfaces.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, 1911 11.42371

Toyohara Kunichika

Japanese, 1835–1900

Three Young People (Mitate Waka Sannin): Actor Ichimura Kakitsu IV as Konezumi Chūji, 1866 Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

In addition to collecting hundreds of Japanese prints, Van Gogh also organized an informal exhibition of them during his time in Paris, prior to moving to Arles. He utilized solid canary-yellow backgrounds in his own portrait practice, starting in Paris and continuing in Arles, that recall Japanese prints, like this one. As is often the case with creativity, multiple stimuli may be at play in Van Gogh’s use of the strong yellow background, including his interest in the saffron cast produced by gaslight.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, 1911 11.21896

____________________________________________________________________________________

SECTION 5: LETTERS FROM THE POSTMAN

In late December 1888, after a heated dispute with Gauguin, Van Gogh cut off his left ear. He was admitted to the hospital in Arles for care of the wound and attention to his mental state. His brother Theo came right away but only for the day, returning to Paris with Gauguin in tow. Joseph Roulin visited the artist in the hospital, as did his wife, and he wrote letters to Van Gogh’s siblings updating them on his condition. Discharged in early January, Van Gogh spent the day with Roulin at the Yellow House. Before the end of the month, Roulin was sent to Marseille for work. His family could not afford to immediately join him there, so he had a few occasions to visit them (and Van Gogh) in Arles.

Letters between painter and postman continued for months, though only the postman’s side of the communication remains. Roulin offered comfort, words of encouragement, and updates about his own family. Van Gogh was in and out of the hospital in Arles for the first few months of 1889. Realizing he needed long-term care, he checked himself into the asylum in nearby Saint-Rémy, where he lived from May 1889 to May 1890. He spent the final two months of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise, a town north of Paris that was nearer to his brother.

Full translations of the ten letters written by Joseph Roulin to Vincent van Gogh and his siblings are available in the book that accompanies the exhibition.

Letter from Joseph Roulin to Theo van Gogh

26 December 1888
Ink on paper
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Excerpt:

“I have been to see your brother Vincent. I promised to tell you what I thought of him. I am sorry to tell you that I think he is lost. Not only is his mind affected, but also he is very weak and despondent. He recognized me but did not show any pleasure at seeing me and did not ask about any member of my family nor anyone else that he knows. When I left him I told him that I would come back to see him; he replied that we would meet again in heaven, and from his manner I realized that he was praying. From what the concierge told me, I think that they are taking the necessary steps to have him placed in a mental hospital.”

Letter from Joseph Roulin to Theo van Gogh

28 December 1888
Ink on paper
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Excerpt:

“my wife went to see him, and he hid his face when he saw her coming. When she spoke to him, he replied well enough, and talked to her about our little girl, and asked if she was still as pretty as ever. Today, Friday, I went there but could not see him. The house physician and the attendant told me that after my wife left, he had had a terrible attack; he had a very bad night, and they had to put him in an isolated room. Since he has been locked in this room, he has eaten no food and completely refused to talk. That is the exact state of your brother at present.

The house physician has told me that the doctor has postponed for a few days the decision to have him placed in a mental hospital in Aix.”

Letter from Joseph Roulin to Theo van Gogh

3 January 1889
Ink on paper
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Excerpt:

“my friend Vincent has completely recovered; he will leave the hospital one of these days to return to his house. Do not worry, he is better than before that unfortunate accident happened to him. At present he can move freely about the hospital; we walked for over an hour in the courtyard; he is in a very healthy state of mind.

I went to see the head of the hospital who is a friend of mine; he replied that he would do as I wished, that he had not yet made any decision and would wait until I had seen Vincent before taking any action. Immediately after, I went back to him and told him to return our good Vincent to his paintings. He said that he was free to leave when he wished. The house physician has advised him to stay a few more days to get back his strength and allow his scar to heal completely.”

Letter from Joseph Roulin to Theo van Gogh

4 January 1889
Ink on paper
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Excerpt:

“I am truly happy today. I went to the hospital to get my friend Vincent and take him for a little fresh air. We went to the house, he was pleased to see his paintings again; we stayed four hours; he has completely recovered, it is really surprising. I am very sorry my first letters were so alarming, and beg your pardon for it. I am glad to say I have been mistaken in his case. He only regrets all the trouble he has given you, and is sorry for the anxiety he has caused. Don't worry; I will do all I can to give him some distraction; one of these days he will leave the hospital and go back to his paintings. That is all he thinks of, he is as sweet as a lamb.

The house physician was rather uneasy about letting him go, so I told him that I would take it upon myself to accompany him and bring him back to the hospital.”

Letter from Joseph Roulin to Theo van Gogh

7 January 1889

Ink on paper

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Excerpt:

“I am happy to announce that our friend Vincent left the hospice at noon today, Monday; he is very well, so don't worry.

I received your last letter with money order of 30 frs which it contained. I have paid 21 f 50 of the rent for the month of December: my children thank you for the gift, I thank you for the good new year wishes you express to me for myself and my family. My whole family joins me in asking you to accept our wishes for you and your loved ones.

Please accept, dear Sir, the best wishes of your brother Vincent's friend, as well as those of my family.” *

Letter from Joseph Roulin to Willemien van Gogh

8 January 1889
Ink on paper
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Excerpt:

“I make haste to answer you that your amiable brother Vincent has quite recovered; he left the asylum today, the 7th. What caused my reply to be postponed for twenty-four hours is the fact that we kept each other company all day long...

We talked at great length about you as well as about your mother today.

Many thanks for the good wishes you expressed with regard to my wife and our little girl. Please set your mind quite at ease as to the health of my good friend Vincent; I go to see him as often as my work permits and if something should happen again, I should inform you as soon as possible.”

Letter from Joseph Roulin to Vincent van Gogh

13 May 1889
Ink on paper
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Excerpt:

“If I have delayed in writing to you, I thought I could use my day off to go and see you; as I was not able to come to Arles, I come to ask you for news of your health, are you well recovered since our last conversation? You seemed to me disposed to begin your work in earnest again, the countryside is beautiful, you cannot lack for models. You would give me great pleasure if you did me the honor of a reply.”

Letter from Joseph Roulin to Vincent van Gogh

22 May 1889
Ink on paper
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Excerpt:

“When I got up this morning, Wednesday, my landlady handed me your letter, which satisfied me to learn that you had left Arles to go to St-Rémy of your own accord. Continue your paintings, you are in a beautiful part of the world, the countryside is very beautiful, the soil is very well worked, you will find a great change in the farming down there, you will not find gardens that look like cemeteries, as in Arles. Continue to take good care of yourself, follow properly the good advice which will be given to you by the good Doctor who is attached to the establishment. I have great confidence that your health will be completely restored, with the good will that you have you will succeed in doing very fine paintings, you live in the garden of the Bouches du Rhône, you will not lack for models made by nature, continue and be of good heart.”

“Please, Mr Vincent, accept my regards as well as those of my family, and a caress from Marcelle who, thanks to you, can say hello to my Portrait evening and morning, for they are hanging in the alcove where she sleeps, she rests in peace under the benevolent gaze of both the wife and the Father.”

Letter from Joseph Roulin to Vincent van Gogh

19 August 1889
Ink on paper
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
Excerpt:
“I received your letter with great pleasure, especially to learn that you are in good health.

I am very pleased that your brother is very happy with married life, he appears to be such a good man that if he has taken a wife like himself, they must be happy....We are very charmed by the welcome he gave to our Portraits, as much for the friendship he shows towards myself and my family as for the praise he gives to your work.

Marcelle is ever more beautiful....If you had seen her admiring paintings, as soon as she saw a painting in houses, in the street, she talked to it.

I will not have your paintings, our portraits, until I have the family. Do not fear that I will have anything done to your paintings for I respect the artist’s talent too much, and once my word is given you know it is sacred to me. Let us hope that one day we can see each other again....

Do not be discouraged, work in those beautiful fields, take advantage of the models that nature provides you, with work health will return.

Dear Mr Vincent, accept my sincere regards as well as those of my wife and my children. Marcelle sends you a big kiss.”

Letter from Joseph Roulin to Vincent van Gogh

24 October 1889
Ink on paper
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation) Excerpt:

“Excuse me if I did not reply immediately I received your letter; I was waiting for the family. They arrived in the first week of October in very good health, Marcelle is still more than beautiful, she calls everyone by their names, in fact she’s a little parrot, she makes the whole house happy...

In your letter you tell me that you have worked a lot, that you have twelve canvases prepared, I hope that you will finish them in good health and that these unfortunate crises will not recur any more....

...let us hope that one day again we shall have the happiness to shake hands and to tell each other in person such good things and to cement our friendship once more; I am confident and am full of hope to see you again one day, I am pleased to see you moving closer to your brother.... I think it will do an enormous amount of good for your health. I think that if you go and settle in the environs of Paris you will take up your palette and brushes with much more strength...

All my family joins with me in sending you our best regards... Marcelle sends you a big kiss, as does Camille, who acts as my secretary.

Mr Vincent, please accept the sincere regards of all my family as well as those of him who declares himself your truly devoted friend.”

____________________________________________________________________________________

SECTION 6: OBSERVATION AND INSPIRATION

[QUOTE]

I can’t work without a model. I’m not saying that I don’t flatly turn my back on reality to turn a study into a painting — by arranging the color, by enlarging, by simplifying — but I have such a fear of separating myself from what’s possible and what’s right as far as form is concerned. [...]

I’m still living off the real world. I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but still I don’t invent the whole of the painting; on the contrary, I find it ready-made—but to be untangled—in the real world.

Van Gogh to Émile Bernard, 5 October 1888

Observation and Inspiration

Van Gogh saw great potential for art in the everyday world around him. He preferred the stimulus for a work of art to

be something visible, usually the people, places, or artworks he found in his immediate surroundings. His creativity

was both in how he saw the subject and in the ways he modified it—exaggerated it, as he wrote—on his canvas to

bring forth something more. The intensity in his brushstrokes and evocative colors takes us beyond observation to a

greater depth of feeling.

Van Gogh’s works were gaining visibility thanks in part to Theo’s growing inventory of his brother’s canvases in Paris. In autumn 1889, Van Gogh was planning what to include in exhibitions in Brussels and Paris early in the new year. In addition to the feedback he received from artists who saw his paintings in those exhibitions, a lengthy (and important) article dedicated to his work appeared in Mercure de France in January 1890.

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Beyond the Portrait

Augustine Roulin sparked Van Gogh’s imagination. She appears in eight portraits, some of which she posed for in person, while the artist used a previous portrait as the model for others. Her features also appear elsewhere in his work. She is a steady, calm point of focus within a pulsing and otherwise anonymous crowd of dance hall revelers. She is the emotionally wrought family member in a biblical scene. It was more than her outward appearance; it was her personality and her role as nurturing caregiver that extended from portrait subject to character of consolation.

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle (La Berceuse), 1889 Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]

Today I made a fresh start on the canvas I had painted of Madame Roulin, the one which had remained in a vague state as regards the hands because of my accident. As an arrangement of colors: the reds moving through to pure oranges, intensifying even more in the flesh tones up to the chromes, passing into the pinks and marrying with the olive and Veronese greens. As an Impressionist arrangement of colors, I’ve never devised anything better.

Van Gogh to Paul Gauguin, 21 January 1889

Van Gogh painted Augustine Roulin as La Berceuse five times. He began the first portrait in December 1888, and it remained unfinished in his studio when he was hospitalized after cutting his ear. He completed it when he returned home in late January, and he painted three more shortly thereafter. One of those was unfinished when he returned to the hospital in February 1889. He painted a fifth La Berceuse while in the hospital in March 1889. The order in which the five versions were made cannot be definitively determined from the artist’s letters. (To explore this theme further, visit the Van Gogh display in the Robert and Carol Henderson Conservation Learning Center on the MFA’s third floor in the Linde Family Wing.)

The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection

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Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

The Dance Hall in Arles, 1888 Oil on canvas

Amid the teeming crowd, Augustine Roulin appears in three-quarter profile, just as she does in all of Van Gogh’s dedicated portraits of her. Even in the context of the dance hall, she exudes the calm of a consoling mother, as she would appear in the Berceuse series, including the canvas next to this one. The Dance Hall in Arles expands our understanding of the Roulin family’s place within Van Gogh’s imagination. Painted in December 1888 during Gauguin’s stay at the Yellow House, this work may reflect Gauguin encouraging Van Gogh to work more from memory and imagination. He certainly did not paint this on location, nor was Madame Roulin likely to have gone to this venue with a four-month-old baby at home.

Paris, musée d'Orsay, don de M. et Mme André Meyer, 1951

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

The Raising of Lazarus (after Rembrandt), 1890 Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]

The etchings you sent me are really beautiful. [...] I’ve done [a painting] of three figures which are in the background of the Lazarus etching. The dead man and his two sisters. The cave and the corpse are violet, yellow, white. The woman who is taking the handkerchief from the resurrected man’s face has a green dress and orange hair, the other has black hair and a striped garment. Green and pink. Behind a countryside, blue hills, a yellow rising sun. The combination of colors would thus itself speak of the same thing expressed by the chiaroscuro of the etching.

If I were still to have at my disposal the model who posed for the Berceuse [...], then certainly I’d try to execute it in a large size, this canvas, the personalities being what I would have dreamed of as characters.

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 2 May 1890

By the time Van Gogh painted this canvas, he had not seen Augustine Roulin in more than a year, but his memory of her was strong. He gave the central figure her features, hair color, and characteristic green dress, but his letter indicates that her personality also informed his choice to incorporate her likeness here. He admired her as a wife and mother, and she had visited him in the hospital when he was convalescing. That depth of care and concern comes through in her appearance as the grieving, suffering sister of Lazarus. The face of the resurrected man resembles Van Gogh’s.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

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Rembrandt van Rijn

Dutch, 1606–1669

The Raising of Lazarus (the larger plate), about 1632 Etching and engraving

[QUOTE]

I read your kind letters, then the letters from home as well, and that did me an enormous amount of good in giving me back a little energy, or rather the desire to climb back up again from the dejected state I’m in. I thank you very much for the etchings—you’ve chosen some of the very ones that I’ve already liked for a long time.

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 1 May 1890

The biblical story of Jesus performing a miracle by bringing a dead man named Lazarus back to life has inspired artists for centuries. In 1890, Van Gogh received twelve prints from his brother for his birthday. Included was a heliogravure (an early photographic printing process) that reproduced this print by Rembrandt. The very next day, he sent Theo a letter with a sketch of his just completed painting The Raising of Lazarus (hanging nearby), based on the scene in the lower right corner of Rembrandt’s composition.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Harvey D. Parker Collection—Harvey Drury Parker Fund, 1897

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Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Ravine, 1889 Oil on canvas

97.1268

[QUOTE]

I’m working on a large canvas of a ravine [...] two bases of extremely solid rocks, between which a trickle of water flows, a third mountain that closes off the ravine. These motifs certainly have a beautiful melancholy, and it’s enjoyable to work in really wild sites where you have to bury your easel in the stones so that the wind doesn’t send everything flying to the ground.

Van Gogh to Émile Bernard, 1889

In the autumn of 1889, Van Gogh painted the ravine near the asylum in Saint-Rémy. The following spring, Van Gogh sent this painting to Paris, where Gauguin saw it and wrote to him: “In subjects from nature you are the only one who thinks. I talked about it with your brother, and there is one that I would like to trade with you for one of mine of your choice. The one I am talking about is a mountain landscape. Two travelers, very small, seem to be climbing there in search of the unknown.... Here and there, red touches like lights, the whole in a violet tone. It is beautiful and grandiose.”

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of Keith McLeod, 1952 52.1524

The ravine near Saint-Rémy painted by Vincent van Gogh, photographed in 2017 by Nienke Bakker. Reproduced with permission.

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Enclosed Field with Ploughman, 1889 Oil on canvas

This landscape belongs to a series of pictures based on the view from Van Gogh’s bedroom window in the asylum in Saint-Rémy. The scene is much as the artist described it: “a field of yellow stubble which is being ploughed, the opposition of the purplish ploughed earth with the strips of yellow stubble, background of hills.” The distant windmills, however, were an addition from the artist’s imagination, perhaps a visualization of longing for his Dutch homeland. He also omitted the stone wall enclosing the field. Van Gogh’s studio was on the opposite side of the building from his bedroom, so there would necessarily be a distance between observation and the execution in paint; however, the changes are more a matter of intention and inspiration than oversight.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of William A. Coolidge, 1993 1993.37

View from the artist’s bedroom window, Saint-Rémy. Photographed in June 2021 by Katie Hanson. Reproduced with permission.

SECTION 7: ENDURING LEGACY

[QUOTE]:

“It was only in Arles that [Van Gogh] asserted himself with a truly personal, very pictorial technique.”

“We are exalted in front of the biblical harvests at twilight [...] we are saddened by the shadowy cypresses [...] we dream under these groves of flowers [...] and, after these successive emotions, one reads in the eyes of his portraits the confession of sad or shameful, good or sinister existences. Then we'll be on the way to understanding Vincent and admiring him.”

— Émile Bernard, “Vincent van Gogh,” Les Hommes d’aujourd’hui, July 1891

Enduring Legacy

Van Gogh sent his paintings—including the Roulin portraits—to Theo in Paris, where they were seen and appreciated during the artist’s lifetime. The writer Albert Aurier, who published the first critique dedicated to Van Gogh’s art in the January 1890 issue of Mercure de France, specifically mentioned the portraits of Joseph and Augustine Roulin, praising Van Gogh as part “of the sublime lineage of Frans Hals.” Though Van Gogh modestly quibbled with some of Aurier’s assertions in his article, he did not dispute those regarding his portraiture and his Dutch lineage.

Just a few months later, in July 1890, Vincent van Gogh ended his life. Theo van Gogh died six months later. Émile Bernard published a moving tribute to Van Gogh in 1891 (quoted nearby) and organized a small exhibition of his friend’s art in Paris the following year.

Most of Van Gogh’s paintings remained with Theo’s widow, Jo van Gogh-Bonger (1862–1925). She worked diligently and strategically to place his work in exhibitions and collections to secure his legacy. Through his art, a modest family in Arles was immortalized and so was the artist, just as he had hoped when he recognized that his contribution to humanity would not be human offspring but creative ideas expressed on canvas.

[Floating quotations]:
My dear brother, you know that I came to the south and threw myself into work for a thousand reasons. To want to see another light, [...] because one feels that the colors of the prism are veiled in mist in the north [...] and the fact that occasionally I’ve also found friends and things that I love here.

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 10 September 1889

A portrait is something almost useful and sometimes pleasant, like pieces of furniture one knows, they recall memories for a long time.

Van Gogh to Willemien van Gogh, 19 February 1890

Unidentified photographer

Armand Roulin at the Age of 50, 1921 Gelatin silver print

Armand, the oldest child of Joseph and Augustine, worked as a blacksmith before enlisting in the French army in 1890. He subsequently served as a police officer in Tunis. Armand married twice but did not have any children. He died in 1945.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

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Unidentified photographer

Marcelle Roulin at the Age of 67, 1955 Gelatin silver print

Marcelle, the Roulins’ youngest surviving child, married in 1908, moved to Paris, and had a daughter named Rose- Renée. They moved back to the south of France, where Marcelle died in 1980 at the age of ninety-one. As Marcelle was the only one of her siblings to have a child and her daughter did not have children, there are no longer any direct descendants of the Roulin family.

Notice the framed reproductions on the mantel featuring Marcelle’s parents in the MFA’s Postman and one of the La Berceuse portraits.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

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Unidentified photographer

Camille Roulin at the Age of 32, 1909 Gelatin silver print

Camille, the younger son, worked in France’s merchant navy before enlisting in the army. He worked for a time as a bricklayer in Lambesc but was sent to the front during World War I. He was discharged on medical grounds in 1916 and died from tuberculosis in 1922.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

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Unidentified photographer

Madame Roulin at the Age of 70, 1921 Gelatin silver print

After her husband’s death in 1903, Augustine Roulin lived with Marcelle until her daughter’s marriage in 1908. She then stayed in Lambesc, in the house that Augustine and Joseph had inherited from her parents. Camille joined her in that home in 1916; after he died in 1922, Augustine moved to Paris where she stayed with Marcelle until her death in 1930.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Unidentified photographer

Joseph Roulin at the Age of 60 or 61, 1902 Gelatin silver print

Joseph Roulin retired from the postal service in 1896, aged fifty-five. He received a modest pension and augmented this income as a metalworker. In 1900, he sold the five family portraits by Van Gogh as well as two landscapes and a still life the artist had given him to the Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard for 450 francs. Roulin did not know the art market and with deteriorating health and limited financial resources, he took the deal he was offered. It was a bargain for Vollard, who might have expected to pay that amount for just one painting. (Ten years earlier, Van Gogh sold a single landscape painting for 400 francs.) Roulin died in Marseille in 1903 at the age of sixty-two.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

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Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Marcelle Roulin, 1888 Oil on canvas

Van Gogh sent this painting to Theo in April 1889. Theo’s wife Jo, who was pregnant with their first and only child (who would be named Vincent), was charmed by this little painting: “I like to imagine that ours will be as strong, as healthy and as beautiful as that one—and that his uncle will consent to do his portrait one day!” (The artist did meet his namesake but did not paint his portrait.)

Van Gogh painted Marcelle when she was just a few months old. He dedicated three canvases to her and two others featuring the baby with her mother. When Marcelle died in 1980, she was one of the last living people who had met the artist. The nearby photograph of Marcelle as an adult features reproductions of Van Gogh’s portraits of her parents on the mantel.

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

Self-Portrait, 1889 Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]

People say—and I’m quite willing to believe it—that it’s difficult to know oneself—but it’s not easy to paint oneself either. Thus I’m working on two portraits of myself at the moment—for want of another model—because it’s more

than time that I did a bit of figure work. One I began the first day I got up, I was thin, pale as a devil. It’s dark violet blue and the head whiteish with yellow hair, thus a color effect.

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 5 or 6 September 1889

Van Gogh had been too ill to paint from mid-July until late August 1889. As he recovered, encouraging letters arrived from family and friends, including Joseph Roulin. While Van Gogh was working on this self-portrait, he reminisced in his letters about his enduring commitment to portraiture and the intense period of time when he worked on the Roulin portraits. The immediacy of the lively brushwork in this self-portrait and the blue garment against a blue background recall Van Gogh’s first portrait of Joseph Roulin painted a year prior. The painter felt a certain kinship with the russet-haired postman, who “isn’t exactly old enough to be like a father to me.”

National Gallery of Art, Washington, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney, 1998.74.5

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch (worked in France), 1853–1890

The Bedroom, 1889 Oil on canvas

[QUOTE]

It’s simply my bedroom, but the color has to do the job here, and through its being simplified by giving a grander style to things, to be suggestive here of rest or of sleep in general. In short, looking at the painting should rest the mind, or rather, the imagination. [...] The solidity of the furniture should also now express unshakeable repose.

Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 16 October 1888

Van Gogh took pride in the bedroom he decorated for himself within the beloved Yellow House. This is his second painting of that space. Made a year after he moved in (by which point he no longer lived there), this work harkens back to a happier time when he was focused on the Roulin portraits and the anticipated arrival of Gauguin. The portraits hanging above the bed attest to the prominence of portraiture in his creative practice and his sense of self. In the first version (shown on the right), the two portraits depict Van Gogh’s male friends, but here they are a (likely) self-portrait and a painting of an unidentified woman, perhaps a longed-for companion.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection

Vincent van Gogh, The Bedroom, October 1888, oil on canvas. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Van Gogh Table of Voices

The exhibition’s content team wishes to thank our Table of Voices Cohort whose varied and thoughtful perspectives helped to shape this project. Table of Voices is generously sponsored by the Linde Family Foundation.

Table of Voices Cohort

Anthony Febo
Reid Flynn Stephanie May Quandre McGhee Marla McLeod Genaro (Geo) Ortega Heather Ross

Angela Soo Hoo

Emily Conwell, Table of Voices Manager

MFA Exhibition Content Team

Kat Bossi
Katie Hanson
Catherine Johnson-Roehr Nick Pioggia
Sanah Rao
Eve Rosekind
George Scharoun

This exhibition also benefited from the participation of our co-curator Nienke Bakker and her colleagues at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Exit Lobby

Please touch!

Van Gogh in 3D

In September 2023, MFA conservators began a collaboration with Canon EU and Canon North America to create a sensory experience that allows visitors to encounter Van Gogh’s paintings in a new way. Paintings conservators Lydia Vagts and Rachel Childers along with conservation scientists Richard Newman and Erin Mysak began an intensive examination and technical study of La Berceuse in anticipation of this exhibition. The painting’s highly textured surface was captured using photogrammetry. This technique consists of photographing the painting under a series of dramatic light angles. The images are compiled into a 3-dimensional model of the surface, which can then be reproduced using a 3D printer. Feel the impasto, its sharp peaks and rounded edges. Enjoy this unique experience of feeling the thick brush strokes that continue to captivate viewers more than 135 years after Van Gogh applied them to canvas.

We wish to thank MFA Objects Conservator Eve Mayberger, MFA Pathways Intern Parker Thompson, Clemens Weijkamp at Canon EU, and Steve Toombs at Canon North America. Without their hard work and support, this 3D print experience wouldn’t have been possible.

If you would like to see and feel more prints, and explore the new findings from the recent technical analysis, visit the Robert and Carol Henderson Conservation Learning Center on the MFA’s third floor in the Linde Family Wing (accessible by an elevator near Taste Café). You can also watch a video with the curator Katie Hanson and conservator Lydia Vagts discussing La Berceuse, the MFA’s painting of Augustine Roulin.

Feel the linear dashed-on eyebrows and long brush strokes of chrome yellow as a skin tone. Van Gogh’s unique choice of color and his painting technique led to the creation of this captivating portrait of 37-year-old Augustine Roulin, who posed soon after giving birth to her daughter Marcelle.

One of the final design elements for the elaborate floral background was the dark blue oval around each orange dot. Feel how these brushstrokes overlap the flower petals and vines.

Much to Van Gogh’s annoyance, the orange paint he used to create dots throughout the background was too dilute and began dripping down the surface. Feel here how he both scraped the paint drips away and painted over them with a lighter green. Some dots dripped upward, indicating Van Gogh turned the painting upside down at one point.

Here you can see Van Gogh’s use of geranium lake, a dye-based paint that gets its name from its rich, transparent effect. Artists were aware of the fugitive quality of the lake colors, but that didn’t dissuade painters like Van Gogh from using them. In this work, the entire upper layer of the red paint film developed a dark crust due to light exposure, except a narrow strip along the right side that was protected by the frame.

Augustine’s hand carefully holds the rope that’s attached to her newborn baby’s crib, rocking it while she posed for her portrait. Feel the sharp, linear lines that make up the highlights on her hand and the accidental smear of the paint on her left sleeve.

The flower petals in the background of La Berceuse offer the richest impasto. In contrast, the centers of these flowers reveal the primed canvas with the pattern of the weave peeking through.

Vincent van Gogh once wrote to his brother about the vibrant pink/reds in the flowers. While some of the red survived (see top right flower), the flowers have faded significantly over time.

Art History News

Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Exhibition Overview

Exhibition Collaborators

Conservation

Publication

Images