La Berceuse

La Berceuse (Augustine Roulin), painted in five versions between December 1888 and March 1889 and now at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, depicts Augustine Roulin — wife of Van Gogh's friend the postman Joseph Roulin — in a complex symbolic composition that Van Gogh discussed at length in letters to his brother Theo and to Gauguin. The title means 'the one who rocks the cradle,' and Van Gogh imagined the painting as a consolation picture for Breton sailors at sea — a Madonna of the modern poor. The rope she holds connects to an unseen cradle; the garish floral background, inspired by popular chromolithographs, deliberately rejects tasteful art in favor of an almost icon-like popular directness.

The composition is deliberately frontal and hieratic — the sitter faces directly out of the canvas like a devotional image, with none of the psychological subtlety of conventional portraiture. The background wallpaper pattern is rendered with almost obsessive completeness, its pink and green floral repeats filling the entire surface. Van Gogh uses unmodulated flat colors in places — particularly in the background — that create a decorative, non-naturalistic effect. The bold black outlines around forms reflect his engagement with Japanese print conventions.