Portrait de Joseph Roulin

Van Gogh met the postman Joseph Roulin in Arles, over drinks near the café where he was lodging, and the two men became close. That friendship mattered most in the hard winter of 1888 into 1889, when Van Gogh's mind gave way. He had cut off part of his own ear, Gauguin had fled back to Paris, and much of the town wanted the strange Dutchman gone. Roulin was one of the few who stayed, visiting him and writing to his brother Theo. Van Gogh painted him six times over those months, always in the blue postal uniform Roulin wore with such pride. In this one the solid, bearded figure sits against a wall of invented flowers, curling and blooming behind the one man in Arles who kept coming to see him.