Portrait of Camille Roulin

In the last months of 1888, living in Arles in the south of France, Vincent van Gogh set out to paint an entire family. Joseph Roulin was the local postman and one of the few real friends Van Gogh made in the town, and over a few weeks he painted Roulin, his wife, and their three children. This is Camille, the middle child, 11 years old when he sat in the yellow house. Van Gogh wanted portraits that felt modern, catching a person through colour rather than fine detail, so the blue of the cap, the green and red of the jacket and the plain yellow behind all turn up again in the boy's face. He made two versions of Camille and sent the work north to his brother Theo in Paris. All of it came in the same stretch of weeks that ended with the December night he cut his own ear.