Portraits

The portraits gave Van Gogh his best opportunity to earn. He believed they were “the only thing in painting that moves me deeply and that gives me a sense of the infinite.” He wrote to his sister that he wished to paint portraits that would endure, and that he would use colour to capture their emotions and character rather than aiming for photographic realism.

Marcelle Roulin, the youngest child, was born on 31 July 1888, and four months old, when Van Gogh made her portraits. She was painted three times by herself and twice on her mother’s lap. Madame Roulin’s husband, the postman, was good friends with Vincent van Gogh while they were both in Arles. Although an infant so young could have hardly posed for long, van Gogh managed to implicate his style of marking his subjects with the events of their lives. This portrait does not idealize the infant, but manages to capture the essence of the newborn. The child does not possess the cherub like qualities of babies depicted in the rococo style, but the definition of the contours of the cheeks are undeniably infantile. The expressions of pale pinks, blues, and yellows, in the baby’s face show van Gogh’s intent to demonstrate the nature of the skin.

Dr. Gachet was also an artist of the Impressionist era. Vincent van Gogh went to the doctor for medical care. Van Gogh saw himself in the doctor; like himself, he saw in Dr. Gachet “the heart-broken expression of our time.” Similar to many of van Gogh’s portraits, the painting is a study not of the physical features of the man, but of the inner qualities of the doctor’s personality. In 1990, it fetched a record price of $82.5 million The twelve-year-old Adeline Ravoux was the daughter of Arthur-Gustave Ravoux, whose inn is where Van Gogh lodged in Auvers-sur-Oise. She later wrote a memoir of Van Gogh’s stay with them. She witnessed Van Gogh’s return to the inn after the fatal incident where he shot himself. She is thought to appear in a number of other paintings, including especially F819 Two Ladies Walking in a Landscape. The sheet fetched $480,000 at a Christie’s sale in 2007.