Vincent van Gogh - Portrait of Madame Augustine Roulin 1888
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Portrait of Madame Augustine Roulin 1888
55x65cm oil/canvas
Winterthur, Oskar Reinhart Collection 'Am Römerholz'
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Augustine Roulin was born on 9 October 1851 in Lambesc and died on 5 April 1930.
After her husband had posed for several works with van Gogh, Augustine sat for Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin in the Yellow House the two men shared. During the sitting, she kept her gaze on Gauguin, possibly for reassurance because, according to her daughter, she was not comfortable in the presence of van Gogh. She sat in the corner of the room for the evening sitting. The resulting paintings were quite different, as was typical of the sessions where the artists' shared the same model. Gauguin's portrait included as background a picture he recently completed entitled Blue Trees. He painted Augustine in straightforward, literal way.
In comparison, Van Gogh's work appeared more quickly executed and more thickly painted than that of Gauguin's painting. Van Gogh admired the work of Dutch master Frans Hals whose portraits display lively brushwork and the direct, spontaneous style of alla prima, or wet-on-wet . The yellow brushstrokes on the side of her head depict the gaslight. Instead of depicting the evening mood, he painted pots of sprouting bulbs. Van Gogh made a connection to her earthy nature by the depiction of germinating bulbs, essentially declaring her a "human tuber." Days after working on this painting Van Gogh began painting the remaining Roulin family members, including the four-month-old baby, Marcelle.