Portrait of Armand Roulin by Vincent Van Gogh Clipboard

Portrait of Armand Roulin by Vincent Van Gogh, oil on canvas 1888, is a painting of a young man in dark blue-grey fedora, yellow jacket and black waistcoat with white collar and tie. The confident, masculine young Frenchman was the son of Roulin, postman of the town of Arles that Van Gogh befriended, and his form fills the picture plane against a greenish grey background. Van Gogh’s bold, expressive drawing and decisive brushstrokes captures the subject’s pensive, slightly sad expression in a painterly, tour-de-force example of the artist’s mature, Post-Impressionist style and empathetic humanism. Vincent Van Gogh (1853 - 1890) was a Dutch painter of the Post-Impressionist movement known for bold, expressive drawing, swirling brushstrokes and bold, heightened colours. In early adulthood Van Gogh worked as an art dealer, teacher and pastor before taking up the full time study of drawing and painting in his late twenties. Influenced by Rembrandt, the 19th century Realists and Barbizon school, Van Gogh's early paintings featured studies of workers and peasants in sombre earth tones. Moving to France in 1886, Van Gogh met with the startling innovations of the Impressionist painters and began to apply their approach to colour and subject matter, which continued into the mature style for which the artist is most renowned. Van Gogh produced many hundreds of drawings and paintings including portraits, landscapes, still life and flower paintings, and numerous self-portraits that became a dominating influence on the modern art of the 20th century and made him one of the most popular artists of all time.