In this artwork, how is the Augustine of the Background elucidated?
Augustine Roulin (née Augustine-Alix Pellicot) was born on 9 October 1851 in Lambesc and died on 5 April 1930.After her husband had posed for several works with van Gogh, Augustine sat for Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin in the Yellow House the two men shared. During the sitting, she kept her gaze on Gauguin, possibly for reassurance because, according to her daughter, she was not comfortable in the presence of van Gogh.  She sat in the corner of the room for the evening sitting. The resulting paintings were quite different, as was typical of the sessions where the artists shared the same model. Gauguin's portrait included as background a picture he recently completed entitled Blue Trees.  He painted Augustine in straightforward, literal way.In comparison, Van Gogh's work appeared more quickly executed and more thickly painted than that of Gauguin's painting. Van Gogh admired the work of Dutch master Frans Hals whose portraits display lively brushwork and the direct, spontaneous style of alla prima, or wet-on-wet .  The yellow brushstrokes on the side of her head depict the gaslight.  Instead of depicting the evening mood, he painted pots of sprouting bulbs. Van Gogh made a connection to her earthy nature by the depiction of germinating bulbs, essentially declaring her a "human tuber."  Days after working on this painting Van Gogh began painting the remaining Roulin family members, including the four-month-old baby, Marcelle.In addition to the mother-daughter works where Marcelle is visible, Van Gogh also created several La Berceuse [la bɛʁsøz]
works where Augustine rocked her unseen cradle by a string.
Van Gogh labeled the group of work La Berceuse meaning "our lullaby or the woman rocking the cradle."  The colour and setting were intended to set the scene of a lullaby, meant to give comfort to "lonely souls."  Van Gogh imagined the painting in several types of settings, such as on an Icelandic fishing boat cabin walls—or the center piece to two Sunflower paintings.There is a fifth version of the painting at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Art Institute of Chicago Sunflower Paul Gauguin alla prima wet-on-wet Lambesc Frans Hals Dutch master