Special to the Patriot-Bridge
The new exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is a touching collaboration between the MFA and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. When the two respective curators, Katie Hanson, of William and Ann Elfers Curator of Paintings, Art of Europe of the MFA and Nienke Bakker, Senior Curator at the Van Gogh Museum, realized that each museum had two of Van Gogh’s portraits of the Roulin family members, it only seemed right to plan a family reunion. After several years in the making, the museums have mounted a modestly sized, but tightly woven together collection of Vincent Van Gogh’s portraits of his new friends when he moved to Arles in 1888. The exhibition showcases 23 works by Van Gogh, including 14 of the Roulin portraits as well as others works of art.
As Van Gogh had come to realize that he was not likely to become the husband and father he sorely wanted to be, he became close first to Joseph Roulin, the town postmaster, and then his whole family, wife Augustine, and three children, Armand, Camille, and Marcelle. In the exhibit, the family portraits are beautifully displayed, some juxtaposed with Dutch portraits.
While Van Gogh is thought of as a French painter, his Dutch roots drew him to the style of that country’s classical portraiture. The exhibit also features other art connected with Van Gogh’s time in Arles, including Paul Gauguin’s renditions of the Roulins, as Gauguin was sharing Van Gogh’s studio at that time.
Japanese wood blocks are displayed both as examples of the art Van Gogh collected to decorate his yellow house and as inspiration for backgrounds in some of his works. One understands how close his chosen family had become to their friend as the exhibit displays ten letters written to Van Gogh’s own family when Van Gogh became ill, updating them on his volatile health condition.
It was said that Roulin visited his friend in the hospital nearly every day. Although Van Gogh moved to Saint-Remy for permanent care and his friend Joseph Roulin transferred for work to Marseille, the friends remained in touch through letters and Van Gogh’s sending landscape paintings of Saint-Remy to the Roulin family.
The final section of the exhibit shares Van Gogh’s last self portrait and famous watercolor of his bedroom in the yellow house, painted in Saint-Remy, reminiscing of his time in Arles. Photographs of the Roulins later in their lives close the circle of the exhibit.
The Roulin family, after Joseph retired, sold their portraits, two landscapes and a still life in 1900 to a Paris art dealer for 450 Francs. After a 125 year journey, these family portraits have been reunited in Boston.
The exhibit, sponsored by Bank of America, taps multiple international collections beyond that of the Van Gogh Museum, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Philadelphia Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, Saint Louis Art Museum, The J. Paul Getty Museum, an Asian private collector, and local philanthropists Rose-Marie and Eijk Van Otterloo, among others.
The exhibit is on view through September 7.