PORTRAIT OF ARMAND ROULIN
By VINCENT VAN GOGH
TURNING to the postman's son, a boy of seventeen, VAN GOGH changes the terms of his painting. For the adolescent shy, self absorbed, with averted glance, & sloping shoulders, not yet fully at home in his clothes VAN GOGH selects a scale of darker, more mooded tones.
Here the contrast of the figure with his surroundings: dark violet blue almost black against the subducd green & a face of reverie rather than strength an age which does not yet know its own mind, in the portrait of the father, a powerful emergence of a strong blue from a lighter blue.
The assertion against this blue of his own dominating nature in the brilliant warmth of the features. In this direct informal portrait which looks so unarranged as if the artist desired only an adequate image.
We find also an imagination at work in the strong characterful drawing of the broken silhouette, in the bold simplicity which in assimilating the colour of the hat to the jacket, including even the hair in the common dark boundary, constructs a casual, hidden full of unexpected complication and beautiful chords through the pairing of head & cravat, between the two dark masses.
The unexpected warm highlights of the tie light up this beautifully patterned region, the long pointed form, very dear to VAN GOGH, recurs in the neck & the bit of hair on the forehead.
Very fine is the drawing of the outline of the face, broken by some features & enclosing others. A work of great simplicity, subtlety & truth.
VINCENT VAN GOGH PAINTINGS.
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