Joseph Roulin, a postal employee, was a friend of Van Gogh’s when the artist lived in Arles, a town in the South of France, in 1888–89. Van Gogh depicted Roulin in the uniform he always wore proudly, setting him against an imaginative backdrop of swirling flowers. The artist’s use of bold colors and flat patterns would have resonated with Austrian artists who were part of the Vienna Secession movement that formed a decade later.
2024
Gallery label from 2012.
This portrait of Joseph Roulin is one of six van Gogh painted of his close friend, a postal employee in the southern French town of Arles, a fifteen-hour train ride from Paris. Van Gogh had moved to Arles in 1888, hoping to create an artists cooperative there. The plan never came to fruition, and the artist became lonely and isolated. He found comfort and companionship with the Roulin family, and they are the subjects of many of his paintings. In this portrait, Roulin is depicted in the uniform he always wore proudly, set against an imaginative backdrop of swirling flowers. In a letter to his brother Theo, the artist wrote that, of all genres, "the modern portrait" excited him the most: "I want to paint men and women with that something of the eternal which the halo used to symbolize, and which we try to convey by the actual radiance and vibration of our coloring."
Provenance Research Project
This work is included in the Provenance Research Project, which investigates the ownership history of works in MoMA's collection.
1889, Vincent van Gogh, Arles, France.
April 1889 - January 1891, Theo van Gogh (1857-1891), Paris, acquired from his brother Vincent van Gogh.
January 1891 - December 1923, Johanna (Jo) van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam, in trust for her son, Vincent Willem van Gogh, Amsterdam, inherited from Theo van Gogh.
December 1923/January 9, 1924 - February 1924, Tate Gallery (National Gallery, Modern Foreign Section), purchased through Jo van Gogh-Bonger and Leicester Galleries, London.
February 1924 - February 21, 1924, Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam, reacquired by exchange from Tate Gallery.
February 21, 1924 - March 30, 1926, Galerie Thannhauser (Siegfried Rosengart), Lucerne, purchased through Jo van Gogh-Bonger and Leicester Galleries, London.
March 30, 1926 - 1946, Bernhard Mayer, Zürich/Ascona and New York, purchased from Galerie Thannhauser.
1946, Heirs of Bernhard Mayer
1989, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired from the above through Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zürich.
For further reading: Die Sammlung Bernhard Mayer. Exhibition at Kunsthaus Zurich 1998 (exhibition catalogue).
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Vincent van Gogh
Dutch, 1853–1890 6 works onlineWhat makes a portrait modern? And what makes a modern portrait continue to appear modern, even decades after it was created? For Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890), the answer was clear: color.
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Portrait
A representation of a particular individual, usually intended to capture their likeness or personality.
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