La Berceuse (Woman Rocking a Cradle; Augustine-Alix Pellicot Roulin, 1851–1930)

Van Gogh painted this portrait of Madame Roulin in January 1889, while he was recovering in the hospital at Arles after the ear incident. Augustine Roulin was the wife of the postman Joseph Roulin, one of Van Gogh's closest friends in Arles. The portrait is vertical, roughly 36 by 29 inches. Madame Roulin sits in a chair, seen from the front, her hands holding a rope that connects to a cradle off-canvas. She is rocking the cradle, which gives the painting its title: La Berceuse, the woman who rocks. She wears a green dress with a yellow shawl, and her face is rendered in broad, simplified planes of color. The background is a patterned floral wallpaper, painted in reds and greens. A rope runs from her hands down to the lower edge of the canvas. Van Gogh had been hospitalized since December 1888. He began this painting in January, one of the first works he completed after the crisis. He painted five versions of the same portrait, sending them to Theo, to Paul Gauguin, and to Emile Bernard. He imagined the painting hanging between two of his sunflower canvases, forming a triptych with the flowers as side panels and the mother as the central figure. The Roulin family was central to Van Gogh's Arles period. Joseph Roulin was a postman and a drinking companion who visited Van Gogh in the hospital. Van Gogh painted portraits of all three Roulins and their children. Madame Roulin sat for this portrait in the hospital, where Van Gogh had set up a makeshift studio. Oil on canvas, 92.7 by 73.7 centimeters. Van Gogh used thick, directional strokes for the face and hands, and a flatter, more decorative approach for the wallpaper background. The rope is painted as a single continuous line of yellow. The warm greens and yellows of this portrait make it suitable for a bedroom or nursery, where the subject of a rocking mother resonates. It pairs with warm walls and soft furnishings. The 16x20 framed version in a red oak frame complements the painting's warm tones. The painting was acquired by the Met through the bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot in 1967. This is a public domain artwork (CC0), from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 24x36 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.