AMSTERDAM (AP) — The Van Gogh Museum brings back families scattered this fall, honoring postal workers, his wife and children who sat as models for Dutch masters when he was struggling to make friends in the French town.
Portraits of Joseph Lulin, a vastly bearded mailman from the late 1880s, his wife, two sons and baby daughter gathered for an exhibition entitled “Van Gogh and Lulins.”
The show brings together family paintings from museums around the world and features armchairs from the artist’s studio in Earle, in the southern region of Provence.
The show will take place in Amsterdam after a run at a museum in Boston. A museum in Boston provided one of the exhibition’s centerpieces. A portrait of a Postman (he was actually a post office clerk) shines in a blue uniform sitting in an armchair made from local Willow from Provence.
While preparing for the show, Van Gogh Museum spotted a chair that appeared on a roof portrait and is now displaying it for the first time. There it was thought to be fragile to be sent to Boston for the show.
“At the end, we have this chair in our collection, but we’ve never shown it before,” said Emily Gordenker, director of the Van Gogh Museum. “And when you start working on the topic, in this case a portrait of the Roulin family – showing all sorts of things you have never thought of before.
Vincent Van Gogh created a total of 26 portraits of the family in a burst of creative activities from July 1888 to April 1889. Fourteen of his works are on display at the museum, along with works by his friends and painter Paul Gauguin, as well as the Dutch Golden Agemasters Rembrandt van Lyszin and France Hals.
“A lot of people really consider his Arles period to be his peak,” Gordenker said. “I don’t know if we’ll completely agree with that, but it’s the moment he turns the corner… His strength as an artist really comes out.”
In a room on the second floor, the museum created a life-size facade of the yellow house that Van Gogh used as Earls’ studio.
“Lulin is not old enough to be like my father, but in the same way, he has a quiet sole and kindness to me, like an old man,” the artist wrote in a letter to his brother Theo in April 1889.
Nienke Backer, who curated the show with Katie Hanson at the Boston Museum of Art, said his Earls days were important to Van Gogh’s artistry.
“He literally says that drawing people brings the best in me, but I feel like a part of humanity, so that’s very important,” Backer said.
She said that after Van Gogh left Ares, the chair was kept and then handed over to the artist’s relatives, and ultimately to the museum.
The museum currently displays chairs near the paintings at the Boston Museum, which features Lulins and chairs.
“Of course, it’s very moving to have this amazing portrait, but it’s also very moving to be able to show the actual chair he was sitting in and realize it’s a very simple little chair,” Backer said.
The exhibition will open on Friday and will run until January 11th.
