Van Gogh and the Postman

“I’m now working on the portrait of a postman with his dark blue uniform with yellow. A head something like that of Socrates, almost no nose, a high forehead, bald pate, small grey eyes, high coloured full cheeks, a big beard, pepper and salt, big ears.” Vincent van Gogh

READ FULL ESSAY: Christie’s

“While Roulin isn’t exactly old enough to be like a father to me,” Van Gogh described to Theo in April 1889, “all the same he has silent solemnities and tendernesses for me like an old soldier would have for a young one. Always—but without a word—a certain something that seems to mean: we don’t know what will happen to us tomorrow, but think of me in any event. And that does one good when it comes from a man who is neither embittered…