Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse)

Van Gogh and Gauguin had talked in Arles about Pierre Loti's novel of Breton crews fishing off Iceland, and the thought stayed with Van Gogh after Gauguin left. He wanted a picture that could hang in the cabin of such a boat, where men far out on a cold sea might feel something of being rocked as children. The woman who sat for it was Augustine Roulin, wife of the postman Joseph Roulin, the friend who had stood by him through the worst of that winter. She holds a cord that runs out of the picture to a cradle you never see. He liked the idea enough to paint it five times over, and he imagined the canvas hung between two of his sunflower pictures, with the flowers standing at either side like lamps. This version was painted in February 1889, a few weeks after he came out of hospital.