L'Écolier

Van Gogh painted this in Arles late in 1888, in the months when the postman Joseph Roulin and his family were about the only friends he had there. He portrayed all of them, parents and three children, more than 20 canvases in all, and this is the middle child, Camille, who was 11. The boy wears his school cap and sits with an arm over the chair, his mouth slightly open, as if his mind has wandered off. Van Gogh wanted these to be more than likenesses. He thought of them as portraits of ordinary working people, the sitters he felt closest to. He made this one within weeks of the December night in 1888 when he cut off part of his own ear.