Van Gogh painted a total of 7 portraits of Madame Ginoux the owner of the Café de la Gare in Arles, France. Van Gogh came to know Madame Ginoux, or Marie Jullian the wife of Joseph-Michel Ginoux, while he took lodging at the café from May to September of 1888 before moving into the Yellow House. (http://blog.vangoghgallery.com/index.php/2013/09/17/the-madame-ginoux-portraits-by-vincent-van-gogh/) In 1890 during his stay in the asylum at Saint-Remy, Van Gogh produced 5 more portraits of Madame Ginoux; this time based on Gauguin’s drawing rather than his own portrait. Madame Ginoux was obviously on his mind, in a letter to Theo on February 2, 1890 he wrote, “I am a little anxious about a friend who, it seems, is still ill, and whom I should like to see. She is the one whose portrait I did in yellow and black, and she has changed very much. She has nervous attacks, complicated by a premature change of life, in short, very painful. She looked like an old grandfather the last time. I had promised to come back in a fortnight, but was taken ill again myself.” One of the portraits painted while in the asylum was intended for Gauguin, another for Theo, one for Madame Ginoux and one for Van Gogh himself. He wrote to his sister, Wil, on June 5, 1890 and described his aim for his portraits, “I should like to paint portraits which would appear after a century to people living then as apparitions. By which I mean that I do not endeavour to achieve this by a photographic resemblance, but by means of our impassioned expressions – that is to say, using our knowledge of and our modern taste for colour as a means of arriving at the expression and the intensification of the character.” (http://blog.vangoghgallery.com/index.php/2013/09/17/the-madame-ginoux-portraits-by-vincent-van-gogh/) See also: http://curiator.com/art/vincent-van-gogh/535 http://curiator.com/art/vincent-van-gogh/larlesienne-madame-ginoux http://curiator.com/art/vincent-van-gogh/larlesienne http://curiator.com/art/vincent-van-gogh/larlesienne-madame-ginoux-with-gloves-and-umbrella http://curiator.com/art/vincent-van-gogh/larlesienne-madame-ginoux-with-books-after-gauguin