Portrait of Joseph Roulin

In the spring of 1888 van Gogh came south to Arles, and for months he could barely make a friend. One of the first who took to him was Joseph Roulin, who worked at the railway post office moving the mail. The two grew close — the café owner who knew them both said they were 'like brothers.' Van Gogh painted Roulin at least six times, and painted his wife and children too, filling the empty rooms of his life with this one family. He loved the man's plain, weathered face. In a letter he compared it to Socrates: hardly any nose, a high bald forehead, small grey eyes, red cheeks, and that great pepper-and-salt beard spreading over his postman's uniform with its brass buttons and gold braid. Later that year, when van Gogh fell badly ill and most of Arles turned away from him, Roulin was one of the few who kept coming to sit with him.