Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Adeline Ravoux, the Innkeeper’s Daughter

The daughter of the innkeeper at the Café de la Mairie in Auvers, where Van Gogh spent the final ten weeks of his life, Adeline Ravoux was only 12 years old when she sat for this portrait by Van Gogh. As is common in Van Gogh’s late works, the shape and texture of his individual brushstrokes are powerfully on display. She emerges in this picture from a dense, expressive background of layered black and blue brushstrokes. Her stiff, semi-formal dress is rendered through a palette of blues contoured by a dark graphic outline, as blunt navy streaks run upwards to create the folds and movements of the material. Within this heavy framing, Ravoux herself appears delicate and uncertain: only two thin ochre lines make up her pursed lips, while her left hand seems to clasp at her right. If the portrait’s emphatic brushwork, as well as its profile composition, invest Ravoux with a dignity beyond her years, these quieter elements bring the viewer back to her youth and vulnerability.

After completing this portrait, he gifted it to Ravoux and painted another version to share with his brother Theo (1890, Private Collection). Upon Van Gogh’s death just over a month later, one of these two versions hung by his coffin at the back of the Café de la Mairie, alongside other vibrant and animated canvases the artist produced during his short time in Auvers.