Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits

Exhibition at the MFA, Boston, 30 March - 7 September 2025;
then at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 3 October 2025 - 11 January 2026

Vincent van Gogh once wrote: ‘What fascinates me most... is the portrait, the modern portrait’. This passion blossomed between 1888 and 1989 when, during his stay in Arles in the south of France, the artist painted a number of portraits of a neighbouring family who had agreed to pose for him. They were the postman Joseph Roulin, his wife Augustine and their three children, Armand, Camille and Marcelle. During his year in Arles, the artist produced an astonishing 26 painted portraits of the family members, both as a group and individually, as well as numerous drawings.

This exhibition catalogue retraces for the first time Van Gogh's tender relationship with the postman and his family, as well as his revolutionary depictions of them. Drawing on letters from the artist, archival documents, contemporary criticism and technical studies, it offers essays on Van Gogh's practice, his convictions on portraiture, his personal relationship with the Roulins and his admiration for his contemporaries and for seventeenth-century Dutch portrait painters.