#53 La Berceuse — Mug

The rope in her hands runs to a cradle you cannot see. She is Augustine Roulin, the wife of the postman who stayed van Gogh's friend through everything, and he painted her five times. He wanted this picture hung between two panels of sunflowers, and said he imagined it in the cabin of a fishing boat — something for sailors far from home to look at, a lullaby made of paint rather than sound. The title means the woman who rocks the cradle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.