Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle (La berceuse)

Vincent van Gogh · 1889

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

92.7 × 73.8 cm (36 1/2 × 29 1/2 in.); Framed: 111.9 × 91.8 × 8.3 cm (44 1/16 × 36 1/8 × 3 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Post-Impressionism

Madame Roulin Rocking the Cradle radiates a deliberate, almost hypnotic stillness — Augustine Roulin seated square to the viewer, a rope in her hands connecting her to an unseen cradle just beyond the frame. Van Gogh painted this composition in Arles in early 1889, during one of the most turbulent and productive periods of his life. The image is deceptively simple: a woman, a chair, a densely patterned background of flowers and tendrils. Yet the flattened forms, bold outlines, and intense colour relationships reveal how deeply he had absorbed Japanese woodblock prints and the decorative ideas he had been discussing with Gauguin. The green of the background hums against the reds and pinks of her dress in a way that feels emotional rather than observed. Van Gogh made five versions of this painting. He envisioned them hanging together with his Sunflower canvases as a kind of triptych — describing in letters how he imagined exhausted sailors finding solace in the image, as if it were a lullaby made visible. This hand-painted oil reproduction is made to the scale and proportion of the Art Institute of Chicago's version, with each layer of paint built up by hand to preserve the tonal warmth and surface texture that make the original so quietly compelling.