Child with Orange

Child with Orange is one of the last paintings Vincent van Gogh made, and it portrays Raoul Levert, the two-year-old son of Vincent Levert, the carpenter in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise. The bond between painter and carpenter was close: Levert supplied the frames for Van Gogh's canvases, and from that practical arrangement a friendship grew. After Van Gogh's unexpected and tragic death, the same craftsman made his coffin, a connection that adds an emotional weight to how the portrait is read today.

The boy sits in a flowery meadow, dressed in a frock with long hair. This should not be surprising: until the age of five or six, boys and girls were commonly dressed alike, so clothing alone does not reveal the sitter's sex. His expression feels cheerful and open, and he plays with an orange held in his hands.

The colour of the fruit is echoed in the child's cheeks, a repetition that links different parts of the composition and ties the figure to the green and flowers around him. The scene is simple, almost domestic, and the painter concentrates on a child's gesture and on the colour relationship between the object and the face.

In short, this is an intimate portrait from 1890, painted in oil on canvas, that reflects Van Gogh's attention to the people around him in Auvers during the final months of his life.

Painter

Vincent van Gogh

Date

1890

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

50 × 51 cm

Museum

Villa Flora, Winterthur

Genre

portrait

Depicts

orange, girl

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