Van Gogh: There Is a Fire in Everyone's Heart, but Passersby See Only Smoke
Boston | Van Gogh Exhibition: The Roulin Family Portraits
There is a fire in everyone's heart, but passersby see only the smoke. Yet there is always someone, always that one person, who can see the fire, and comes over to keep me company.
In the crowd, I saw his fire, and hurried over, afraid that if I were any slower he would be buried in the dust of the years.
I carried my passion, my coldness, my fury, my gentleness, and my baseless faith in love, and walked until I was out of breath. Stammering, I said to him: What is your name?
It started with "What is your name," and then, there was everything.
— Van Gogh, Dear Theo
On April 7, a drizzly, rainy afternoon, we hurried over to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
The exhibition brought together 23 works by Van Gogh, including 14 portraits of members of the family of the postman Joseph Roulin.
Van Gogh painted these portraits in Arles, France, between 1888 and 1889.
The exhibition also included early works influenced by classical Dutch portraiture, as well as the artistic inspiration he drew from Japanese ukiyo-e prints, helping visitors fully understand Van Gogh's artistic vision and the context of his work.
Van Gogh's life and work at the time: from 1888 to 1889, Van Gogh spent the golden period of his artistic career in Arles, producing nearly 300 works; his style became more mature and distinctive, his colors intense and full of life.
A man like me, tormented by so much suffering, could not go on living without something greater than myself — my life, and the power to create.
If we can no longer create physically, let us try to create ideas instead of children. That way, we are still part of humanity.
Ah, the portrait — the kind of portrait that captures the thoughts and soul of the model — it seems to me that it is bound to come.
— Van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, September 3, 1888
The sunshine in Arles was bright and the light intense, kindling Van Gogh's passion for color; he hoped to capture that unique play of light and shadow in his work.
The Roulin family and Van Gogh: Van Gogh's life was rather lonely then, and he had little contact with the locals.
The Roulins were Van Gogh's neighbors in Arles. The postman Joseph Roulin, his wife Augustine and their three children became important subjects of his portraits, and in the Roulin family he also found emotional comfort and a family-like warmth.
The family not only gave Van Gogh moral support, but also became a source of inspiration for his exploration of the modern portrait.
In October 1888, the painter Paul Gauguin came to Arles, bringing a brief period of artistic collaboration and hope, but the two men's personalities and artistic ideas were too different, and the partnership did not last.
The place of this series in Van Gogh's art
The Roulin family portraits embody Van Gogh's passion for the "modern portrait" and represent an important breakthrough for him in portraiture.
With their vivid colors, forceful brushstrokes and deep expression of the sitters' inner worlds, these works are among the signature pieces of Van Gogh's late art.
Among Van Gogh's roughly 2,100 works, this series of portraits not only broadened his subject matter but also deepened his portrayal of people's emotions and personalities; it is an indispensable part of understanding his artistic career.
I want to make drawings that touch people. What I want to express, in figures or in landscapes, is not sentimental melancholy but serious sorrow. — Van Gogh, Dear Theo
Van Gogh is the first painter who ever made me cry; seeing his brushstrokes chokes me up.
It was only when I read the book Dear Theo that I understood why —
because he had a pure, unalloyed soul.
When I paint the sun, I want to make people feel it revolving at a terrifying speed, giving off waves of light and heat of tremendous power.
When I paint a wheat field, I want people to feel the atoms in the grain growing and bursting.
When I paint an apple, I want people to feel the juice of the apple splashing onto their skin, and the seeds in its core pushing outward toward blossom and fruit!
When I paint a man, I want to paint the whole torrent of his life. ---- Lust for Life