Van Gogh’s postman: the artist’s favourite portrait subject to be explored in Boston and Amsterdam shows

An exhibition is being deliberate on portraits of Van Gogh’s closest buddy in Provence: the postman Joseph Roulin. Proudly sporting his distinctive uniform, the closely bearded man seems in six work—and together with his spouse and kids in 17 extra.

In his total profession, Van Gogh by no means made so many portraits of a single household. Simply over half of those are to be reassembled, from around the globe, for a two-venue present.

Van Gogh: The Roulin Household Portraits will run at Boston’s Museum of High quality Arts (30 March-7 September 2025) and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (3 October 2025-11 January 2026).

Joseph Roulin was in control of dealing with publish on the railway station in Arles, which lies on the principle route from Paris to Marseilles. Then aged 47, Roulin most likely first met Van Gogh on the bar of the Café de la Gare, lower than three minutes’ stroll away from each the station and Van Gogh’s Yellow Home. Van Gogh described his new companion as “one thing of an alcoholic”.

The primary portrait exhibits Roulin sitting by a desk, most likely contained in the Yellow Home. The postman stares forward, showing barely in poor health comfortable. Van Gogh admitted in a letter to his a buddy that Roulin was “getting too stiff whereas posing”.

Van Gogh and Roulin socialised regularly throughout the summer time and autumn of 1888. After the horrible ear mutilation simply earlier than Christmas, it was the postman who got here to the artist’s rescue. Roulin helped clear up the blood-stained Yellow Home, commonly visited his buddy in hospital, saved Vincent’s brother Theo knowledgeable, and helped the affected person to be discharged in January.

In early 1889, simply weeks after the ear incident, Van Gogh painted three extra portraits of Roulin. Though very comparable in composition, being head and shoulders, it’s fascinating to notice how the backgrounds are fairly completely different, creating numerous results.

Van Gogh additionally painted Roulin’s spouse Augustine, who gave beginning on 31 July 1888. In early December he depicted her along with her child, Marcelle. Shortly afterwards he started a extra stylised composition with Augustine holding a cradle rope, an image he entitled La Berceuse (The Lullaby). Van Gogh’s enforced hospitalisation interrupted his work, and he accomplished 4 copies. The primary model, usually in Boston, is briefly on view in London, within the Nationwide Gallery’s exhibition Van Gogh: Poets & Lovers (till 19 January 2025).

Van Gogh additionally painted portraits of their three kids: Armand (then aged 17), Camille (11) and Marcelle (4 months).

Roulin died in Marseilles in 1903. His youngest baby, Marcelle, was to ultimately turn into one of many final folks alive whom Van Gogh had recognized: she died in 1980, aged 91. After all she had no direct recollections, being an toddler when the artist was in Arles, however as a baby she would have heard her mother and father communicate of the artist.

In 1959 Marcelle wrote to Theo’s son Vincent, saying that her father, the postman, had offered six work that they had been given by Vincent. These had been purchased in 1900 by the Paris artwork vendor Ambroise Vollard for simply 450 francs (then £18, or £3 every).

The closest I personally bought to the Roulin household was assembly Jacques Chabot, the great-grandson of the postman’s sister Baptistine. Chabot, who died in 2013, had recognized Marcelle when she was aged.

Vincent was delighted with the portraits of the Roulins. On 1 December 1888 he wrote with nice enthusiasm to Theo: “I’ve executed the portraits of a whole household, the household of the postman whose head I did earlier than – the person, his spouse, the newborn, the younger boy and the 16-year-old son [who had actually turned 17], all characters and really French”.

Different Van Gogh information:

• Christie’s offered Head of a Lady with White Cap (January-February 1885) for £1,855,000 on 9 October in London. The Nuenen portray has a captivating provenance, because it was acquired within the early Thirties by the Swiss artist Cuno Amiet, who had been a lot influenced by Van Gogh within the Eighteen Nineties and early 1900s. It was offered to boost funds for the Amiet Basis, which promotes his work.

• The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has opened its exhibition Extremely-Violet: New Mild on Van Gogh’s Irises (till 19 January 2025). The present features a digital reconstruction of what the image might need seemed like earlier than the violet pigment within the flowers pale to blue.