March 30, 2025. Van Gogh turned 172. And the Museum of Fine Arts, after a loan from the Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands, put on an exhibition of Van Gogh’s portraits of the Roulin family. Some of the portraits are the MFA’s—like Postman Joseph Roulin (1888)—but most of them are loans from the Dutch museum. 

The Van Gogh Party, as I will call it for the rest of the article, was sold out at the max capacity the museum had designated for it. The party had cupcakes for the would-be 172-year-old in Van Gogh-esque colors, art making, and portraits from Nick Shea—the man you may have seen drawing portraits of people on Boston Common. The line for both the cupcakes and the portraits wrapped around walls and into other areas. The event also gave me the opportunity to go see the John Wilson exhibition. (New game: count how many times I say “exhibition”). The artist, born in Roxbury, drew portraits. But unlike most other portrait painters, he had to put a lot more thought behind a message in his art, being a school teacher and a father gave him almost no time to work. The Incident (1952) is especially striking, hitting you right in the face as you turn a corner. All of his art is masterful, like the two sculptures sitting in the last part of the gallery, but most of it is charcoal on paper, sketches, or paintings. There’s commentary in every piece, even the seemingly simple ones like Father and Child (1970), which also happens to be a personal favorite, along with the five paintings he did of his son’s friends, the series entitled The Young Americans.

The actual Van Gogh exhibition was fairly short, albeit crowded. The collection of Roulin portraits in the actual exhibition is about 16 or 18 paintings, although Van Gogh painted 25 of them during the course of his two year stay in Arles, France; there are other portraits in the exhibition, too, like portraits from Van Gogh’s influences of Rembrant and Gauguin as well as other paintings from Van Gogh’s stay in Arles. The famous The Yellow House (1888) or the Goodnight Moon-like Bedroom in Arles (1888) are in the exhibition. There are also two self-portraits, one of which is Self Portrait (1887), one of the few Van Gogh paintings that depicts the ear that he would later cut off in 1888 after a dispute with Paul Gauguin and gift to a prostitute while in Arles. The exhibition has letters, too, from the postman and head of the Roulin family himself, Joseph Roulin, to both the artist’s brother Theo and a few to Van Gogh himself whilst the painter was in a mental hospital after he cut off his ear. The letters are in French of course—and cursive—but a translation is next to them and if you stand in front of the letters, you can hear them being read, a nice little touch if you just want to admire the cursive and handwriting of Joseph Roulin.

Both exhibitions I attended were beautiful—and I was grateful for the big layout of rooms in the Van Gogh exhibition that gave room for people to walk around the big crowds. My opinion remains the same for every exhibition I see and write about: I think everyone reading this should go see them. John Wilson is up until June 22, and Van Gogh is up until September 7. 

The MFA also has a new Monet that is totally gorgeous that he painted when he was half blind and I think you should go see that too, as Monet was a great influence for Van Gogh.