THE picturesque figure of the postman Roulin with his curly beard and the word POSTES in gold letters on his blue uniform cap is a familiar image from Van Gogh's ProvenSal period. How picturesque he was in the literal sense of the word becomes evident when one realises that Van Gogh has left us no fewer than six painted portraits of this man. To find so many versions is unusual in Van Gogh's œuvre, and yet this is not the only example. Two women in Arles were also among his favourite models. They were Augustine Roulin, the postman's wife, and Marie Ginoux, the wife of Joseph Ginoux, who ran the Café de la Gare where Van Gogh had rented a room from May until September 1888. He painted Augustine Roulin (or 'Madame Roulin' as he always called her) eight times and Marie Ginoux (who is mostly referred to in his letters as 'the Arlésienne') seven times.

, and yet this is not the only example. Two women in Arles were also among his favourite models. They were Augustine Roulin, the postman's wife, and Marie Ginoux, the wife of Joseph Ginoux, who ran the Café de la Gare where Van Gogh had rented a room from May until September 1888. He painted Augustine Roulin (or 'Madame Roulin' as he always called her) eight times and Marie Ginoux (who is mostly referred to in his letters as 'the Arlésienne') seven times.

BY any standards Renoir's Baigneuses (Fig.5) is a strange picture.* It combines high-key colour with harsh contouring; the seemingly casual, transitory incident it shows- one girl about to splash another- is transformed into a complex interplay of mannered gestures, frozen and rigid. The figures are startlingly immediate in their effect, because they are so sharply outlined and fill the frame so tightly, seemingly placed so close to the viewer. Few can have seen it without a moment of shock at its vividness. But it has also caused great trouble to historians because it does not fit comfortably into any of the obvious categories - not into a history of Impressionism, or into a linear narrative of Renoir's life and career, or into the standard recent ac- counts of art in Paris in the 1880s.

(Fig.5) is a strange picture.* It combines high-key colour with harsh contouring; the seemingly casual, transitory incident it shows- one girl about to splash another- is transformed into a complex interplay of mannered gestures, frozen and rigid. The figures are startlingly immediate in their effect, because they are so sharply outlined and fill the frame so tightly, seemingly placed so close to the viewer. Few can have seen it without a moment of shock at its vividness. But it has also caused great trouble to historians because it does not fit comfortably into any of the obvious categories - not into a history of Impressionism, or into a linear narrative of Renoir's life and career, or into the standard recent ac- counts of art in Paris in the 1880s.

FEW artists have created so many wholly imagined or 'invented' figure compositions as Cézanne.* Critics have always acknowledged that these works diffier from his land- scapes and still lifes, being characterised by a sobriety whose relationship to the apparently commonplace subject matter is not easy to determine. They differ, too, from the picnic and bathing scenes encountered in the work of other artists. But, like Cézanne's paintings of landscapes and still lifes, these invented scenes are a continuing presence during nearly forty years of artistic activity.