When Vincent van Gogh moved in next door to Postman Joseph Roulin, he not only discovered a new friendship. In each member of the Roulin family, the artist also found a new muse. Now, over a century later, the iconic Post-Impressionist portraits that resulted from this neighborly connection are the subject of a new exhibition.
Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits will be on view at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from March 30 through September 7, 2025. Then, the exhibition will head to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from October 3, 2025, through January 11, 2026.
First-of-its-Kind Exhibition Showcases “Full Flowering of Van Gogh’s Artistic Aspirations”
In 1888, Vincent van Gogh moved to Arles, a coastal commune in the south of France. Amidst his prolific creative output and struggles with mental health, the artist forged a formative friendship with his new neighbors: the local postman Joseph Roulin, his wife Augustine, and their three children. Over a period of several months, Van Gogh produced 26 portraits of the Roulin family. These portrayals capture the intimate beauty of forging a chosen family—and, at the same time, bittersweetly reflect Van Gogh’s unrealized desires for marriage and children of his own.
In collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, MFA Boston presents the first-ever exhibition dedicated to this body of work. Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits features a total of 23 works by Van Gogh, including MFA Boston’s Postman Joseph Roulin (1888) and Lullaby: Madame Augustine Roulin Rocking a Cradle (La Berceuse) (1889). These portraits will be displayed alongside more than 20 loans from prominent international collections.
“The exhibition gives visitors the opportunity to see the full flowering of Van Gogh’s artistic aspirations and the intensity of his focus—a clarity that may have emerged, in part, because of his very deep bonds with the postman and his family,” said Matthew Teitelbaum, the Ann and Graham Gund Director of MFA Boston. “It tells a new and compelling story of Van Gogh’s emotional and artistic search to make connection to a family who helped guide his last years.”
Exhibition Features 14 Roulin Family Portraits and 10 Handwritten Letters
Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits is presented in four thematic sections. First, it traces Vincent van Gogh’s friendship with the Roulin family. Then, it dives into Van Gogh’s artistic admiration for his predecessors, his attempt to cultivate a community of artists, and his emotional connections with family members and friends.
Of the 23 works by Van Gogh featured in the exhibition, 14 are portraits of members of the Roulin family. Examples of Japanese woodblock prints and earlier Dutch art that directly inspired Van Gogh will also be on view. Additionally, the exhibition presents 10 handwritten letters from Joseph Roulin to Van Gogh and the artist’s siblings together for the first time, offering moving insights into Van Gogh’s emotional world at a turning point in his life and career.
