Arles, 1888

The record dates Postman Joseph Roulin to 1888. Portraiture is the change the Arles year brings to this catalogue: the Paris years are dominated by self-portraits and city views, and from 1888 the record fills with named sitters. Eight works here carry the Roulin name — five dated 1888 and three dated 1889 — naming the postman himself, Madame Augustine Roulin and Armand Roulin.

What the record gives

The canvas is 81.3 x 65.4 cm and is held by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The measured palette resolves to a single family, blue. That is a distinctly 1888 result: blue is a dominant family in 26 works dated to the Arles year, more than in any other year in this catalogue.

Two portraits of the same man

The record also holds Portrait of Postman Roulin, dated 1888, at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Portrait of the postman Joseph Roulin, also 1888, and Joseph-Etienne Roulin, dated 1889. These are separate canvases with separate dimensions in separate collections. A catalogue that treats them as one picture loses the fact the record is actually reporting: that in a single year in Arles the painter went back to the same face repeatedly, as he had gone back to the weavers in Nuenen four years earlier.