La piccola Marcelle Roulin

Van Gogh made this in Arles in December 1888, one of the hardest months of his life. He had befriended the local postman, Joseph Roulin, and then set about painting the man's whole family in turn. The youngest was Marcelle, born that summer. Here she is about four months old, all round cheeks and small waving arms against a plain green ground, seen so close up that the baby nearly fills the little canvas. He painted her three times on her own and set her twice more on her mother's lap. This warmth toward the Roulins came in the same weeks that ended with his breakdown and the wound to his own ear, just before Christmas.