A subject carried from one period to the next

The record dates Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle (A Lullaby) to 1889. Eight titles in this catalogue carry the Roulin name — five dated 1888 and three dated 1889 — so the name straddles the boundary between the Arles and Saint-Rémy periods as this site draws it. Two titles name a cradle, one dated 1887 and this one.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 91 by 71.5 centimetres, an upright close to the catalogue's commonest format without matching it exactly, and it is held by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, one of five entries here in that collection, dated 1884, 1887 and 1889. The measured palette reads as green.

Green in 1889

Green dominates fifty-three of the 116 works dated 1889, against sixty-five of 135 in 1888 and fifty of eighty-four in 1890. The family holds a steady share across the last three periods, which is unlike brown and unlike red — both of which fall away almost entirely after Paris. Steadiness is as much a finding as change, and it is visible only because every entry in this catalogue carries a date. Nothing about the sitter or the making of this canvas is recorded, and nothing is added.