1888-12 · Arles · Knot of Intention

La Berceuse

He kept designing what others would feel on seeing his pictures — only the "others" grew harder and harder to have present.

F504 La Berceuse (Augustine Roulin) 1889
F505 La Berceuse (second version) 1889
F506 La Berceuse (third version) 1889
F507 La Berceuse (fourth version) 1889
F508 La Berceuse (fifth version) 1889

The Colour Experimenter

Five versions are five tunings. Each adjusts the proportions of green, red, orange, pink. He worked the picture the way a tuner works a piano. In a letter: "green and orange tones, yellows and blues" — four colours, two complementary pairs, that needed to oppose and console one another at once. This is the most complex colour engineering he attempted — not for shock (Night Café), not for dazzle (Sunflowers), but for calm. For the first time the colour experimenter chose harmony as the goal.

The Copyist

The decorative wallpaper behind her — flat orange flowers on a green ground — comes directly from the ukiyo-e in his collection. The figure-and-ground separation, lifting a person out of three-dimensional space and placing her against a flat decorative wall, is a standard ukiyo-e move. He copied no specific print here; he had absorbed the grammar wholesale into his portrait method. The mature copyist replicates the syntax, not the image. La Berceuse is at once Augustine's portrait and a thank-you to the woodblock print for the rule he learned from it.

Painting

Five versions. The same mother — Augustine Roulin — green coat, red hair, both hands holding an unseen rope; at the other end of that rope, off-canvas, an unseen cradle. The background is a decorative wallpaper: orange and pink flowers blooming on a green ground, flat, symmetrical, ukiyo-e in feeling. Orange, pink, red hair, green coat, green ground — a lullaby he said aloud he wanted to write in colour. With each version he adjusted the hues a little, like singing the same song again, slightly different.

Letter

January 1889. To Gauguin: "I just told Gauguin that I had imagined a sailor returning home and finding his berceuse, and that I had painted that." Another letter: "It's an arrangement of colours I was looking for — green and orange tones, yellows and blues." A third, the most direct: "That it should be a lullaby in colours, that's what I would have wanted." The rope is in Augustine's hands, but it was the rope he himself wanted to be rocked by.

Place

Arles, next door to the Yellow House. Augustine Roulin had just had her daughter Marcelle; she sat with the baby in the next room while he worked. He started the first version two weeks after the ear, the last while still bandaged. Five months earlier this had been the house of the southern studio. Now it was the house he painted a stranger's mother in, because his own family was four hundred kilometres away.

The Colour Experimenter

The Copyist

before

Around the time Gauguin arrived, Madame Roulin had her third child. He wanted to paint her keeping watch beside the cradle.

now

He painted five versions, four of which went out in an earlier batch, distributed among those near him. In his letters he imagined the picture hung at the far end of a fishing boat's cabin, like a decoration bringing comfort to those adrift at sea. He also said he wanted to make this picture and the sunflowers into a triptych.

after

Gauguin had already left. That triptych plan was never carried out.

Events

1889-01 The Copyist · Letter 736
Began La Berceuse in the first week after discharge. Augustine Roulin held the rope of an off-canvas cradle in her hand
1889-01 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 736
Wrote to Gauguin: 'I told Gauguin that I imagined a sailor returning home and finding his berceuse — and that I had painted that.'
1889-02 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 743
'It's an arrangement of colours I was looking for — green and orange tones, yellows and blues.' Four colours, two complementary pairs, made to oppose and console one another at once
1889-02 The Copyist · Letter 736
The decorative wallpaper behind her — orange flowers on green — came directly from the ukiyo-e in his collection. The figure-and-ground grammar of Japan absorbed wholesale into the portrait method
1889-03 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 739
'That it should be a lullaby in colours, that's what I would have wanted.' The rope was in Augustine's hands; it was the rope he himself wanted to be rocked by
1889-03 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 745
Completed the fifth version — five tunings done. Each version differs slightly in colour proportion, like a tuner working a piano

From the Letters

Je viens de dire à Gauguin que j'avais imaginé un tableau de marin rentrant chez lui et trouvant sa berceuse et que j'avais peint cela.

I just told Gauguin that I had imagined a painting of a sailor returning home and finding his berceuse, and that I had painted it.

Letter 736

C'est un arrangement de couleurs que je cherchais, la berceuse avec ses tons verts et oranges, les jaunes et les bleus.

It's an arrangement of colours I was looking for, the berceuse with its green and orange tones, the yellows and blues.

Letter 743

Que ce soit une chanson de berceau en couleurs, voilà ce que j'aurais voulu.

That it should be a lullaby in colours, that's what I would have wanted.

Letter 739

Letter Sources

Van Gogh letter records referenced on this page, linked to the Van Gogh Letters Project. vangoghletters.org