“Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits” exhibition, which opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston March 30, is the first exhibition dedicated to Van Gogh at the MFA in 25 years.
The exhibition focuses on Van Gogh’s time in France, where he formed a friendship with the local postman, Joseph Roulin, and his family.
Planning for the exhibition began seven years ago when Katie Hanson, co-curator of the exhibit, invited Nienke Bakker, senior curator at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, to the MFA. The two visited the portraits of Joseph Roulin and his wife, Augustine, on display in the permanent collection.
“Nienke said to me, ‘You know, you have mom and dad in the MFA collection, and we at the Van Gogh Museum have two of the three kids from that same family. There’s never been an exhibition dedicated to Van Gogh’s portraits of this family that was so important to him,’” Hanson said.
Then began the planning of the exhibit.
The exhibition includes 23 works by Van Gogh, including 14 of the Roulin portraits. Early Dutch artwork and Japanese woodblock prints that inspired Van Gogh are also included.
As visitors walk into the exhibition, a ghost room replication of the Yellow House, including the famous Yellow House painting by Van Gogh, opens the space.
“[We] decided to represent it as a very simple ghost structure to give visitors a sense of space and scale,” said Sanah Devika Rao, MFA exhibition designer.
Nick Pioggia, assistant art director in the design department at the MFA, said the Yellow House structure helps draw viewers from the opening room into the rest of the exhibition.
“It was a way to eat up some floor space, but also offer visitors a glimpse of how big Van Gogh’s working space was that he often shared with another artist,” he said.
Van Gogh began painting the Roulin family after spending about four months in Arles without finding models for his work, according to a press release by the MFA. He then became friends with postman Joseph Roulin, and their relationship allowed him to pursue his portraiture practice.
One room in the space displays portraits of all five family members — couple Joseph and Augustine, along with their three children: Armand, Camille and Marcelle — on opposite walls, all facing each other.
“As you walk into the central gallery space, which is kind of the heart of the show, you have these diagonal walls, kind of angled in a way where the family is kind of speaking to each other, and the visitor’s at the center of that experience and that relationship,” said Rao.
As one continues through the gallery, the “Letters from the Postman” room displays ten letters from Roulin to both Van Gogh and his family.
“Those letters really also offer insight into the depth of their bond of friendship,” said Hanson.
The “Letters” room incorporates a multimedia experience, Rao said. A voice reads each letter through motion detection as visitors move around the room.
“We definitely wanted it to feel like a forest of letters,” said Rao.
The space was a collaboration with the MFA’s media team, she said. The letters and emotions conveyed in Roulin’s writing help to bring the friendship between Roulin and Van Gogh to life.
“People have been looking at a lot of paintings, they’re a little more than halfway through the show at this point,” Pioggia said. “We offer something that’s not quite as visual, and more of a listening, low-light break from everything, and then you can dive into the last few galleries of the show.”
Hanson said she loved that the exhibition grew from artworks that are part of the MFA’s permanent collection.
“When they go back into the permanent collection, our visitors can take what they learned from this project, and I can take what I learned from this project, to seeing them and thinking about them in the permanent collection,” Hanson said.
Both Hanson and Rao hope the exhibition gives viewers a new perspective on Van Gogh.
“I hope that people are really thinking about the importance of friendship, the importance of the care that we offer one another and that you can change someone’s life even for a short time,” Hanson said. “Through their friendship with Van Gogh, this family was immortalized in his art.”
“Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits” is on display in the Ann and Graham Gund Gallery from now until Sept. 7.
