Madame Roulin and Chopin - Van Gogh at the National Gallery (VI)

 

A good way to block out the bustle and chatter of exhibition crowds, is to don your headphones and play something that complements what you are looking at. And Van Gogh’s portrait of the matronly Augustine Roulin, rocking an unseen cradle, even supplies you with inspiration as to what you might play. The portrait, La Berceuse (The Lullaby), immediately finds you reaching for Frédéric Chopin’s piano piece of the same name. Its soft, lilting dynamics slow everything down around the painting.

Van Gogh, La Berceuse - The Lullaby (1888)

And perhaps things needed slowing down. The portrait is ablaze - as so much is in this exhibition - with bold, unflinching colour. And though the music I was listening to came right from the tail-end of the Romantic period, what I was looking at conjured up the contradictions and daring of a movement only just being seeded: Modernism. Look at the right side of the chair. Doesn’t the curve of the arms and the way they encompass Augustine’s ample derrière, and the overall flatness of what is depicted, hint towards Picasso’s Cubism and beyond? And then the composition as a whole, and particularly in the vibrant colours being employed ... the flowered wallpaper in the background … you cannot help but think of so many of Matisse’s portraits and scenes involving women. 

Van Gogh’s La Berceuse flanked either side by The Sunflowers.

The real boon of seeing La Berceuse here though is that it allows us to view it in a situation that Van Gogh himself had actually envisioned, a triptych involving two of his Sunflowers masterpieces flanking Madame Roulin. What an absolute privilege.