Колыбельная

Van Gogh started this in Arles at the end of 1888, in the same weeks his mind was coming apart, the crisis that cost him part of his ear. The sitter is Augustine Roulin, wife of the local postman Joseph Roulin, one of the few friends who stood by him there. He kept returning to her, painting five versions in all. The title he chose, La Berceuse, means the woman who rocks the cradle, and he added the clue late: the rope in her hands runs down to a cradle you never see. He imagined the picture hung in the cabin of a fishing boat, a plain green room full of flowers, so that sailors far from home might feel rocked and comforted. He added those hands and the cradle rope only in January 1889, months after he had painted her face.