Date : 1889
Dimensions : 74 cm x 93 cm
Material : Oil on canvas
Acquisition : Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection (1926)
Post-Impressionnistes
| La Berceuse
Item 10 on 13
French Painting
Painting (Portrait)
Area related
Arles (France)
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| Description |  |
In December 1888, Vincent van Gogh began a portrait of Madame Roulin, the wife of a "Socratic" local postman—the artist's own characterization—with whom he had become friends. Van Gogh completed the first of an eventual five versions of the portrait in January 1889, during his recuperation (the Art Institute's painting is the second in the series).
He told in one letter that he had named it La Berceuse, which means both "lullaby" and "woman rocking a cradle", and noted how wonderful it would be "to achieve in painting what the music of Berlioz and Wagner has already done." And he advised his brother Theo to place it between two of his sunflower paintings to form a kind of triptych, a "decoration" suitable "for the end wall of a ship's cabin."
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Les faux Van Gogh
La vente record (40 millions de dollars au magnat japonais de l'assurance Yasuo Goto) d'un bouquet de tournesols de Vincent Van Gogh, par Christie's le 30 mars 1987, sera à l'origine d'un scandale majeur.
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