After painting postman Roulin, Vincent was invited to paint the rest of the family as well.
He was delighted with his models: ‘[…] the man, his wife, the baby, the young boy and the 16-year-old son, all characters and very French’, he wrote to his brother Theo in Paris in early December 1888. Vincent gave the family a painting of each model, as a token of thanks. Joseph and Augustine were especially touched by the gesture: at the time, a painted portrait was a rare luxury, and photography only became accessible to ordinary people towards the end of the 19th century.
Models from everyday life
Vincent painted the first portraits of all five Roulins in just a week. He considered them ‘studies’, and hoped the family would return later for ‘more serious sessions’. He deliberately chose not to paint a group portrait, having realised – since The Potato Eaters – that his strength did not lie in compositions with multiple figures.
Vincent painted the family members as themselves, but they also symbolised universal archetypes: Joseph Roulin as the postman, Madame Augustine Roulin as the nurturing mother, Armand as the young man on the threshold of adulthood, Camille as the schoolboy and Marcelle as the baby glowing with health. For his Roulin portraits, Vincent was inspired by 17-century portraiture by Dutch Masters such as Rembrandt and Frans Hals. The figures depicted in their paintings had become symbols of their time and culture. Vincent hoped to do something similar, but for the hardworking lower class.
A tribute to motherhood with Madame Roulin
After painting two portraits of Augustine with the four-month-old Marcelle, Van Gogh became increasingly eager to paint Augustine as ‘la berceuse’ – French for both ‘she who rocks the cradle’ and ‘lullaby’. Vincent wasn’t so much aiming for a close likeness of Madame Roulin, but rather for a symbol of motherhood. Like the gentle rhythm of a lullaby, the colours in the work were intended to evoke a feeling of warmth and comfort.
Vincent van Gogh, Augustine Roulin (La Berceuse), 1888-1889, oil on canvas, 92 × 72,5 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum. Photo: Rik Klein Gotink
The child is notably absent in La Berceuse. Vincent used the string in Augustine’s hand to suggest the presence of a cradle – by pulling it, she can rock the cradle, which remains just out of view. Vincent came up with the idea of the string himself, inspired by a print he had of the painting The Holy Family at Night from Rembrandt's studio, which shows a woman holding a similar string.
Studio Rembrandt van Rijn, The Holy Family at Night, c. 1642- a. 1648, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Family life
The Roulin family reminded Vincent of the life that he shared six years earlier with his then partner, Sien Hoornik, and her two young children. It intensified his desire to create a home for himself in Arles.
Vincent had come to accept that his life as an artist made him an unsuitable partner for a woman, but he still longed for a sense of domesticity. He hoped to share his home in Arles with a kindred spirit, ideally another painter, which is why he invited Paul Gauguin to join him there. In the Yellow House, painters could live ‘like a family’. The fact that things turned out so differently hit Vincent hard.
The first painting of La Berceuse was still on the easel when Van Gogh suffered his breakdown after the argument with Gauguin. Tensions between the two had been building for weeks, but working on La Berceuse also put great strain on Vincent. The painting about motherhood was intended to show warmth and comfort, while that was exactly what was missing from his own life.
Vincent van Gogh, The Yellow House (The Street), 1888
Five versions of La Berceuse
After being discharged from hospital in early January 1889, Vincent returned alone to the Yellow House and continued work on the first version of La Berceuse. In the weeks that followed, a series of unsettling messages disrupted his world, deepening his sense of loneliness and testing his emotional resilience.
Firstly, Theo shared his plans to propose to Jo Bonger – a sign that Vincent’s beloved brother was taking the first step towards a family of his own. Theo would soon have someone else to support besides Vincent. And just a few days later, Vincent learned that Joseph Roulin, his trusted friend in Arles, was being transferred to Marseille. He would be leaving in a few days.
Undeterred, Vincent continued work on the still unfinished Berceuse. But with her husband away, Augustine was not keen to sit for him. Vincent had to finish the painting without her.
‘I've done the Berceuse three times, now since Mrs Roulin was the model and I was only the painter, I let her choose between the three, her and her husband, only on condition that I'll do a repetition for myself of the one she took, which I'm working on at the present.’
When Augustine moved with the children to her mother’s home in a nearby village, she took the third version with her – Vincent’s token of gratitude for her posing as his model.
Vincent van Gogh, Augustine Roulin (La Berceuse), 1888-1889, oil on canvas, 92 × 72,5 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Photo: Rik Klein Gotink © Collection Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands
Vincent van Gogh, Augustine Roulin (La Berceuse), 1889, oil on canvas, 92.7 × 73.8 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago, Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection. Photo: The Art Institute of Chicago
Vincent van Gogh, Augustine Roulin (La Berceuse), 1889, oil on canvas, 92,7 × 73,7 cm, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection. Donation of Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg, 1996, bequest of Walter H. Annenberg, 2002, Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Image source: Art Resource, NY
Vincent van Gogh, Augustine Roulin (La Berceuse), 1889, oil on canvas, 92 × 72.5 cm, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Gift of ir. V.W. van Gogh, Laren (NL)
Vincent van Gogh, Augustine Roulin (La Berceuse), 1889, oil on canvas, 92.7 × 72.7 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bequest of John T. Spaulding, Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Gratitude
Vincent experienced many ups-and-downs during his final months in Arles. Time and again, he turned to painting for stability. He planned to combine La Berceuse with two versions of Sunflowers, which would serve as ‘yellow shutters’ to brighten the green portrait. The three paintings together were meant to convey gratitude and comfort – things that Vincent longed for more than ever.
- Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1889, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)
- Vincent van Gogh, La Berceuse, 1888–89, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
- Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1889, Philadelphia Museum of Art
- Vincent van Gogh, letter sketch to Theo, May 1889, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
Next part: On the threshold of adulthood
In the next story, you'll discover more about the three portraits that Vincent van Gogh painted of Armand Roulin, the 17-year-old eldest son of Joseph and Augustine.
