The story of Van Gogh's guardian angel

By: Deborah Nicholls-Lee / BBC
Translation: Telegrafi.com

During the most difficult and turbulent period of his life, the post-impressionist painter was supported by an unexpected kindred spirit: Joseph Roulin, a postman in Arles. A new exhibition explores this close friendship and its impact on art history.

On December 23, 1888, the day Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and gave it to a sex worker, he was cared for by an unexpected friend: the postman Joseph Roulin.

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A rare figure of stability during Van Gogh’s two turbulent years in Arles, southern France, Roulin ensured that he received care in a psychiatric hospital and visited him while he was there, writing to the artist’s brother, Theo, to keep him informed of his condition. He paid Van Gogh’s rent during his treatment and spent the whole day with him when he was released two weeks later. “Roulin … has a silent calm and a gentleness towards me, just as an old soldier might have for a young one,” Van Gogh wrote to Theo the following April, describing Roulin as “such a good soul, so wise and so sensitive.”

To honor this touching relationship, the exhibition Van Gogh: Portraits of the Roulin Family [Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits] will open at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, USA, on March 30, before moving to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in October. This is the first exhibition dedicated to the portraits of all five members of the Roulin family. It features more than 20 paintings by Van Gogh, along with works by artists who influenced him, including the XNUMXth-century Dutch masters Rembrandt and Frans Hals, as well as the French artist Paul Gauguin, who lived with Van Gogh for two months in Arles.

“What I wanted most with this exhibition is to tell a human story,” co-curator Katie Hanson tells the BBC. “The exhibition highlights the fact that Roulin was not just a model for him – he was someone with whom he developed a very deep bond of friendship.” Van Gogh’s turbulent relationship with Gauguin, and the clash between them, which perhaps led to the ear incident, has often dominated the narrative around him. However, Roulin offered something more stable and simple. This is evident in his portraits – the open sincerity with which he returns Van Gogh’s gaze, and the mutual respect and kindness that radiates from the canvas.

Van Gogh moved from Paris to Arles in February 1888, believing that brighter light and more intense colors would enhance his art and that the people of the South had a “more artistic” appearance, making them ideal subjects for his paintings. Hanson emphasizes his “openness to possibilities” during this period and his sense, still familiar today, of being a new face in a new city. “We don’t have to find our way in life on the first try; we can also be looking for our future direction, our future country,” she says. And it was with this mindset that Van Gogh, as a newcomer with “a big heart,” welcomed the new connections in his life.

Before moving into the nearby yellow house – now well-known inside and out – Van Gogh had rented a room above Café de la Gare. The bar was frequented by Joseph Roulin, who lived on the same street and worked at the nearby train station, supervising the loading and unloading of mail. Feeling that his strength lay in portraiture but having difficulty finding people to sit for him, Van Gogh was thrilled when the eccentric postman – who spent a large part of his income at the café – agreed to pose for him, asking only for payment in food and drink.

Between August 1888 and April 1889, Van Gogh created six portraits of Roulin, symbols of companionship and hope, contrasting with the themes of loneliness, despair, and dark fate that appear in some of his other works. In each, Roulin is dressed in his blue postal uniform, adorned with gold buttons and ribbons, while the word “post” is proudly emblazoned on his hat. His broad nose and flushed face, the result of years of alcohol consumption, made him a fascinating muse for the painter, who described him as “a man more interesting than many others.”

Roulin was only 12 years older than Van Gogh, but he became a guiding light and a father figure to the reclusive painter – because of his thick beard and obvious wisdom, Van Gogh called him Socrates. Born into a wealthy family, Van Gogh belonged to a completely different social class from Roulin, but admired his “strong peasant nature” and his resilience in difficult times. Roulin was a proud and vocal republican, and when Van Gogh saw him singing Marseillaise [La Marseillaise], he noted how picturesque his appearance was, “like something out of Delacroix, out of Daumier.” He saw him as the embodiment of the worker’s spirit, describing his voice as “a distant echo of the trumpet of revolutionary France.”

The friendship soon gave way to four other models: Roulin’s wife, Augustine, and their three children. We see their 17-year-old son, Armand, an apprentice blacksmith with the first traces of facial hair, who seems embarrassed by the painter’s attention; his younger brother, 11-year-old Camille, a schoolboy who, according to the exhibition catalogue, “squirms in his chair”; and Marcelle, the round-cheeked baby of whom Roulin writes: “She makes the whole house happy.” Each painting represents a different stage of life, and each model received his portrait as a gift. In total, Van Gogh created 26 portraits of the Roulin family, a significant output for a single family, rarely seen in the history of art.

Van Gogh had once hoped to become a father and husband, and his relationship with the Roulin family gave him the opportunity to experience some of that happiness. In a letter to Theo, he describes Roulin playing with baby Marcelle: “It was touching to see him with his children on his last day, especially with the little one, when he made her laugh, rocked her on his knee and sang to her.” Outside these walls, Van Gogh often experienced hostility from the townspeople, who called him “the red-haired madman” and even signed a petition to have him locked up. In contrast, the Roulin family was understanding of his mental illness, and their home offered a place of safety and support.

The relationship, however, was far from one-sided. This educated visitor, with his unusual Dutch accent, was unlike anyone Roulin had ever met and offered “a different kind of interaction,” Hanson explains. “He is new to the city, new to Roulin’s stories, and he will have new stories to tell himself.” Roulin enjoyed giving advice—for example, on furnishing the yellow house—and when, in the summer of 1888, Mrs. Roulin returned to her hometown to give birth to Marcelle, Roulin, left alone, welcomed Van Gogh’s company.

Roulin also had the rare opportunity to have portraits painted for free, and when, the following year, he left for work in Marseille, he was comforted by the fact that the baby Marcelle could still see his portrait hanging over her cradle. His love for Van Gogh is evident in their correspondence. “Continue to take good care of yourself, follow the advice of your good doctor, and you will see your full recovery to the delight of your relatives and friends,” he wrote from Marseille, concluding the letter with the words: “Marcelle sends you a big kiss.”

Van Gogh's portraits placed him at the heart of the family home. In his five versions La Berceuse, meaning both “lullaby” and “woman rocking the cradle,” Mrs. Roulin held a rope designed by Van Gogh that rocked the baby’s cradle across the canvas, allowing the two of them to have some peace and quiet to complete the work. The cheerful colors of the background—green, blue, yellow, or red—vary from one family member to another. The rich floral backgrounds, reserved for the parents, appear later, conveying happiness and love—a flourish that followed the simpler early portraits.

Art history has also benefited greatly from the freedom this relationship gave Van Gogh to experiment with portraiture and develop his own distinctive style, with precise forms, bold, bright colors, and thick, wavy brushstrokes that gave the forms a kind of lively vibrancy. From the security of this friendship, he challenged the conventions of portrait painting, prioritizing an emotional response to his subject, deciding “not to reproduce what I have before my eyes” but to “express myself boldly” and paint Roulin, as he told Theo, “as I feel it.”

Had he not felt Roulin's unwavering support, Van Gogh might not have survived the series of devastating crises that began in December 1888, when he cut off his ear with a razor. Thanks to the care of those who loved him, he lived another 19 months, producing an incredible 70 paintings in his final 70 days and leaving behind one of the most precious legacies in art history.

Like the intimate portraits he created in Arles, the exhibition is filled with optimism. “I hope that being around these works of art and exploring his creative process – and his ways of making connections – will be a moving story,” says Hanson. Far from “avoiding the sadness” of this period of Van Gogh’s life, the exhibition demonstrates the power of supportive relationships and “the reality that sadness and hope can coexist.” /Telegraph/