One out of a series of paintings in which the Dutch master documented the family of a postal employee, this portrait of the family patriarch, Joseph Roulin, is housed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Roulin worked in Arles where Van Gogh stayed at the time and became a caring brother-like figure during the artist’s episodes with mental illness and his months in an asylum in 1889. Their mutual respect for each other led to Roulin volunteering his family to models for his portraits at no cost — something that would have been financially difficult for Van Gogh to facilitate himself.