Portrait of Joseph Roulin, by Vincent Van Gogh
In a bar, completely by chance, Vincent Van Gogh eventually met one of the most important people of his life, who gave him some joy in the most difficult times.
It was on December 23, 1888, certainly without feeling involved in the Christmas spirit, that Vincent Van Gogh. Then he offered it to a prostitute. Everything could have run even worse, were it not for the “guardian angel” that reoriesting her life, tells him.
It all started in February of this year, when the famous Dutch painter moved to the French city of Arles. He wanted someone to paint, and in a bar he eventually met Joseph Roulin, a postman who spent much of his modest sorted order.
Roulin immediately accepted to be portrayed, and in return only ordered food and drink. Between August 1888 and April 1889, Van Gogh did six portraits of Roulin, with its blue posting uniform and hopeful expression. These pictures are the piece that contrasts with the sad and agonizing tone of various Van Gogh paintings at this time.
In a letter, the painter wrote that this simple man er erThe “a more interesting man than a lot of people.” He was humble, but he had “a distant echo of the revolutionary France Claim,” and fascinated the Dutch for his intelligent air and his pride. Eventually nicknamed Roulin from “Socrates”. And so it was.
Roulin eventually became a bizarre species of inspiring muse, and the two eventually developed a strong friendship.
The postman, a rural rural man, was only 12 years old than the painter, but eventually became Van Gogh a kind of paternal figure.
This is how, in December of the year they met, Roulin eventually took care of putting Van Gogh in a psychiatric hospital, where he was visiting him. Also paid the painter’s income while it was hospitalized, and It spent with him a long time. He gave him advice and made him company.
Jutno of this curious man, there was something that Van Gogh never had, but admired: a family. He lived with his wife and the two sons of Roulin, who also portrayed, always with cheerful colors and daily scenarios. In all, he created 26 family portraits.
On the street, Van Gogh was “the crazy redhead ”But in the Roulin family, who accepted his mental illness and was part of his daily life, he felt happy, and found the comfort that prevented him from sinking into sadness, which so often tormented him.
“It was moving to see him with his children on the last day, especially with the smallest, when he made her laugh, jumped over her knees and sang to her,” writes in one of her letters the painter, moved by the simplicity of that peasant family.
Now, a new exhibition at the MFA Museum in Boston, USA, displays for the first time portraits of the Roulin family, and explores this close friendship and the way it has benefited the history of art.
Curator Katie Hanson says that “the exhibition enhances the fact that Roulin is not just a model for him – it was someone with whom he developed a very deep friendship with.”
“Far from ‘fleeing the sadness’ of this period of Van Gogh’s life,” she says, “the exhibition witnesses the power of support relations and reality that sadness and hope can coexist“.
