Van Gogh en de Roulins

‘I have painted portraits of an entire family, that of the postman (…) – husband, wife, baby, the little boy and the 16-year-old son (…). You can understand how much I feel in my element,’ Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in 1888. The Van Gogh Museum is bringing the whole family together for the first time and shows the context in which the portraits were made with old photographs of the family, works by other artists that Van Gogh studied, and a life-size replica of Van Gogh’s studio in the Yellow House.

From the moment Van Gogh met Joseph Roulin at the train station in Arles in southern France, Joseph and his family became an important part of Van Gogh’s development as an artist. Whereas Van Gogh had previously painted mainly still lifes and landscapes, he now devoted himself to creating expressive portraits. The Roulins were not only a source of inspiration for his art, but also as a family.

Image: Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Armand Roulin, 1888.