Art history is full of paintings of the rich and powerful: kings and queens, popes and bishops, wealthy aristocrats. But when Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) set his sights on mastering the art of portraiture upon moving to Arles in the south of France in February 1888, he turned to the local postman, Joseph Roulin, and his family to serve as models.

This decision would usher in a key chapter in the artist’s career, now the subject of a first-of-its-kind exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. The traveling show came together after a 2018 visit to the MFA by Nienke Bakker, the senior curator at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which is the co-organizer.

“We were standing in the permanent collection gallery, looking at the postman and his wife, and she said to me, ‘You know, you have mom and dad. The Van Gogh Museum has two of the three children—but there’s never been a show dedicated to this family that was so important to Van Gogh,’” Katie Hanson, the MFA’s curator of European paintings, told me.

Thus, the seed for a family reunion was planted.

Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Madame Augustine Roulin and Baby Marcelle (1888). Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, bequest of Lisa Norris Elkins, 1950.

But it wasn’t just the MFA and the Van Gogh Museum coming to the party—the two museums fleshed out the show with an incredible selection of loans. That includes work from New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam;

Altogether, the exhibition brings together 14 of Van Gogh’s 26 depictions of members of the Roulin family, which comprise three drawings and 23 paintings.

Vincent van Gogh, The Postman Joseph Roulin (1888). Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“It was super unusual for someone to make that kind of extended portraiture campaign of a family that’s not their own family, not patrons, not royalty, just modest, working-class neighbors,” Hanson said.

The MFA’s two portraits of the Roulin parents preside over the show, gazing out at one another from opposite ends of the exhibition’s three central rooms. In the middle, all five family members are represented, Van Gogh’s vibrant colors popping against rich purple walls. (The arrangement is meant to recall a warm familial embrace, and Van Gogh’s loving relationship with the family.)

Installation view of “Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits” on view at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, with Armand Roulin (1888); Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse), 1889; and Portrait of Joseph Roulin (1889). Photo courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

To set the scene of Van Gogh’s time in Provence, the exhibition opens with his 1888 painting The Yellow House (The Street), depicting his home in the town, loaned by the Van Gogh Museum. (The building was demolished after a bombing campaign during World War II.) There’s also a physical structure built in the gallery to recreate the footprint of Van Gogh’s studio there. (The famous painting of the Yellow House bedroom is included in the exhibition’s final room, on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago.)

In a nod to what Van Gogh wrote in a letter to Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), who would famously come to live with him in Arles later that year, of his desire “to make a painting what the music of Berlioz and Wagner has been before us,” the opening room is set to the sounds of work by the French composer Hector Berlioz (1803–1869).

Vincent van Gogh, The Yellow House (The Street), 1888. Collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Van Gogh wrote to his sister Willemien of the building’s bold colors, which were clearly inspirational: “My house here is painted outside in the yellow of fresh butter, with garish green shutters… And inside, it’s all whitewashed, and the floor’s of red bricks. And the intense blue sky above. Inside, I can live and breathe, and think and paint.”

Before leaving Paris, Van Gogh painted an 1887 self portrait, on loan here from the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. He was optimistic that his upcoming move to Provence would be good for his art, telling Willemien that “what I hope to achieve is to paint a good portrait.”

Vincent van Gogh, Self Portrait (1887). Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut.

There’s also a reproduction of a historic map of the city, illustrating how close Van Gogh lived to the Roulins, and how far Joseph had to walk—about a half-hour each way—to the hospital for his daily visits after the artist cut off his ear on December 23, 1888.

Where Gauguin left town immediately after the shocking incident, Roulin proved a dedicated friend, writing regular updates to Van Gogh’s brother, Theo. (The original letters, which are heartbreaking in their description of the artist’s mental struggles, are on display in a small gallery, translated into English and read aloud by an actor.)

The show is at once tightly focused, on a single family, and surprisingly expansive. In addition to highlighting Van Gogh’s depictions of the Roulins, it also puts the artist’s work within the context of the art that would have inspired him during his lifetime.

Frans Hals, The Merry Drinker (ca. 1629). Collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Van Gogh wrote of his admiration for Frans Hals’s (1582/83–1666) “tipsy drinker,” likely referring to Merry Drinker (ca. 1626), included in the show courtesy of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Looking to 17th-century Dutch portraits was important to Van Gogh, who also wrote of Portrait of a Family in an Interior (1654) by Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1684), on loan from the Louvre in Paris, as “a painting infinitely deserving of study and thought.”

Unlike the Van Ostade work, however, Van Gogh never did a group portrait of the Roulins.

Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Joseph Roulin (1889). Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Rosenberg, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Mr. and Mrs. Armand P. Bartos, the Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection, Mr. and Mrs. Werner E. Josten, and Loula D. Lasker Bequest (all by exchange), 1989. Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Digital image ©the Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resouce, N.Y.

“Knowing what a hard time he had painting The Potato Eaters in 1885, trying to arrange all the bodies together like that, I don’t think he would have taken on doing the five members of the family in one composition,” Hanson said.

Another masterwork of portraiture included among Van Gogh’s inspirations is the MFA’s own Portrait of Aeltj Uylenburge (1632) by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669).

Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Aeltje Uylenburgh (1632). Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection.

“Seeing these side-by-side, you really get a sense for how Van Gogh’s thinking about artists he admires and what they’ve achieved in portraiture,” Hanson said.

And then there are copies of prints that the artist actually owned, such as a woodblock print by Toyohara Kunichika (1835–1900), and Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) lithographs, which he wrote to Theo asking for some to hang in his studio. From the MFA’s collection is Jean-François Millet’s (1814–1875) Winter Evening (1867), a pastel and conté crayon drawing that is one of several works by the artist of which Van Gogh was known to have created his own versions.

Émile Bernard, The Artist’s Grandmother (1887). Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

There are also works by artists Van Gogh knew personally, like his friend Émile Bernard (1868–1941), represented by The Artist’s Grandmother, now owned by the MFA. The two collected each other’s works; Van Gogh owned one of Bernard’s paintings of his grandmother—he wrote to Bernard of the works that “you’ve never been closer to Rembrandt, my dear chap”—while Bernard was the original owner of the MFA’s La Berceuse.

There are actually five versions of the composition, although only the Art Institute of Chicago was able to lend theirs for the occasion. But it’s probably even more interesting to see Gauguin’s depiction of the sitter, presumably painted side-by-side with Van Gogh during their time together in Arles.

Installation view of “Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits” on view at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, with Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh’s portraits of Augustine Roulin painted in Arles in the fall of 1888. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Some of the Roulin family paintings are more recognizable than others. The two paintings of the paterfamilias—the MFA’s three-quarters-length portrait of the man in his dark blue uniform with its brass buttons, and the MoMA’s more closely cropped view with its striking floral background—are of course among Van Gogh’s most famous famous works. But I’m not sure I could have told you that the artist ever painted a baby!

Baby Marcelle, with her chubby little cheeks, is one of the stars of the show. The child even captured Gauguin’s imagination, as seen in a page of studies from the 228-page Carnet Huyghe sketchbook he kept while in Arles, on loan from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Marcelle Roulin (1888). Collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

Van Gogh captured Marcelle with a sweetness and tenderness more associated with Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), both painted sitting on her own and in her mother’s loving arms.

“At this time, Van Gogh is 35, and in his letters he is coming to terms with that. He had hoped to be a husband and father, but doesn’t think that’s going to happen for him,” Hanson said, noting that the Roulins became an important surrogate family for the artist, and that painting them was a way the artist could contribute to the world without leaving behind children of his own.

“The parents are really Van Gogh’s peers, and he admires them immensely as a married couple and as parents. He just thinks she’s the ideal mom,” Hanson added. “And he talks about that in his letters, and it’s really charming.”

Vincent van Gogh, Postman Joseph Roulin (1888). Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, gift of Robert Treat Paine. Photo ©Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The first time Van Gogh painted Joseph Roulin—and his first portrait session with the family—was actually the day of Marcelle’s birth, on July 31, 1888. (Unlike an artist painting a commissioned portrait, Van Gogh compensated Roulin for his time with food and drink at the local café.)

“A head like that of Socrates, almost no nose, a high forehead, bald pate, small grey eyes, high-colored full cheeks, a big beard, pepper and salt, big ears,” Van Gogh wrote to Willemien. “His wife gave birth today and so he’s in really fine feather and glowing with satisfaction.”

Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Armand Roulin (1888). Collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

The Roulins had waited a long time for their third child. (Augustine, Joseph’s wife, went to stay with her parents ahead of the birth, while he remained in Arles for work.) Camille, the middle child, had just turned 11, and Armand, the oldest, was 17, the hint of a mustache just beginning to shadow his upper lip.

You might be surprised to learn that Augustine was only 37 when Van Gogh painted her. In La Berceuse, she looks distinctly careworn and well beyond her years, sitting in front of another vibrant floral design. (This was a painterly invention, inspired by Japanese prints as well as the kind of backdrops that would have been used in studio photography portraits at the time.)

Vincent van Gogh, Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse), 1888. Collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, bequest of John T. Spaulding.

The painting reflects that Japanese influence in the artist’s work in a surprisingly contemporary way—look hard enough, and you might be reminded of Yubaba, the crone in Hayao Miyazaki’s (b. 1941) 2001 anime film Spirited Away.

But seeing the work with other paintings of Augustine’s family, including portraits where she holds up her bouncing baby, provides additional context clues. The rope that she holds in her hand is actually attached to baby Marcelle’s cradle, allowing her to rock it without bending down. (The original Snoo?)

James McArdell, The Holy Family at Night. Collection of the Museum of Fine Art, Boston.

It’s a scene depicted more clearly in the MFA’s James McArdell (1729–1765) mezzotint The Holy Family at Night—another print of which Van Gogh personally owned a copy. And the painting’s official title, La Berceuse, has two meanings: “lullaby,” or “woman who rocks the cradle.”

“Van Gogh liked both meanings of it,” Hanson said. “He said to his brother that one of the things he liked so much about this composition was that he thought it it could be hung in the hull of a ship. Sailors who were feeling melancholy and alone at sea might feel like they were being rocked by a consoling mother.”

Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Camille Roulin (1888). Collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0166v1962

In addition to the two versions of La Berceuse, the show has the one oil painting of Armand, two of Camille, and four of Marcelle. (The selection will be slightly different in the Amsterdam iteration.)

The two Joseph Roulin portraits are accompanied by two drawings of the postman on loan from Los Angeles, from the J. Paul Getty Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It’s a rare opportunity to see these ink-and-paper depictions alongside the full-scale oils—and one that won’t be repeated when the show crosses the Atlantic, as the light-sensitive works have to go back into storage.

The painting Postman Joseph Roulin was the first work by Van Gogh to enter the MFA collection, a gift from Robert Treat Paine II in 1935. At the time, it was a somewhat controversial acquisition.

Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Joseph Roulin (1888). Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

“There was an article in the newspaper in Boston wondering if the museum was right to bring on board these ‘untested works’ of Modern art—that it remains to be seen if they’d stand the test of time, or if they’d end up in storage,” Hanson said. “You and I both know that they have not only stood the test of time, they’ve become real highlights of our collection.”

In an especially fascinating touch, the Van Gogh Museum has also loaned its photographs of the Roulin family, allowing viewers to compare the portraits to their actual likenesses—albeit many years later. There’s Camille at 32, Armand at 50, Augustine at 70, and baby Marcelle, an old woman at 67, paired with her baby portrait. (It somehow still looks like her!)

Two black and white photos of Vincent van Gogh’s repeat portrait subjects, Marcelle Roulin and her father Joseph Roulin, both in old age. Her photo dates from 1955, his from 1902. Collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.

The most recognizable, of course, is Joseph, with his distinctive forked beard, now a distinguished silver at 61 years old.

The show also covers Van Gogh’s post-Arles stint at Saint-Paul-De-Mausole, an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. There are landscape paintings he painted during his convalescence, paired with contemporary photographs taken from the site by the exhibition curators.

Vincent van Gogh, Self-Portrait (1889). Collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney.

Walking through the show, it’s impossible to ignore your knowledge of what comes next, with Van Gogh’s death by suicide on July 29, 1890. But the exhibition still manages to end on a hopeful note, with a self portrait. Unlike the 1887 work in the first gallery, this one, painted at the hospital in 1889, shows Van Gogh with his paintbrushes.

“It’s one of just three works in which Van Gogh depicts himself as an artist, and I love that this is one of them,” Hanson said. “He’s just been too ill to work, and he takes up his brushes and paints himself as an artist.”

“Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits” is on view at the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts, March 30–September 7, 2025; and the Van Gogh Museum, Museumplein 6, 1071 DJ Amsterdam, the Netherlands, October 3, 2015–January 11, 2026.