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Madame Roulin and Her Baby

1888
On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 961
This vigorously painted portrait of Augustine Roulin and her infant daughter, Marcelle, is one of Van Gogh’s many evocative renderings of the Roulin family, undertaken some six months after the artist relocated from Paris to Arles. Van Gogh painted the entire family of the local postman Joseph Roulin. Here, the chubbycheeked infant is the focus of the enterprise. Her heightened expression in thickly painted brushwork suggests that the baby may have posed for van Gogh, swaddled in her mother’s embrace. Augustine Roulin, by contrast, is an abbreviated presence.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Madame Roulin and Her Baby
  • Artist: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, Zundert 1853–1890 Auvers-sur-Oise)
  • Date: 1888
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Dimensions: 25 × 20 in. (63.5 × 50.8 cm)
    Framed: 37 3/8 × 32 in. (94.9 × 81.3 cm)
  • Classification: Paintings
  • Credit Line: Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
  • Object Number: 1975.1.231
  • Curatorial Department: The Robert Lehman Collection

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Side Drum, Wood, skin, cord, Dutch
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Margaretha van Haexbergen (1614–1676), Gerard ter Borch the Younger Dutch, Oil on canvas
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Trees and Houses Near the Jas de Bouffan, Paul Cézanne French, Oil on canvas
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