The Church at Auvers

The Church at Auvers was painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1890, during the final weeks of his life, after he had settled in this village north of Paris on the advice of Camille Pissarro, so that Doctor Paul Gachet could look after him. Having left the hospital at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, he found in Auvers a calmer setting and worked at remarkable speed, producing around a hundred pictures in roughly ten weeks.

The building shown is the village's Gothic church, seen from a gently rising ground. Its outline stands against a deep blue sky that is mirrored in the stained-glass windows. What makes the picture striking is its handling of light: the upper part receives strong sunshine, while the church itself lies in shadow and takes on a violet tone, as if it gave off no light of its own. Around it, green grass and sunlit paths running in different directions open the scene out, and a peasant woman makes her way towards the building.

The canvas also looks back to the painter's past. In his letters Van Gogh linked these works to the northern landscapes of his youth, and specifically to the studies he had made at Nuenen of the old tower and the cemetery. The deep blue used here returns in his portrait of Adeline Ravoux, painted in the same short period.

The work matters because it brings together several concerns of his last phase: colour as a carrier of feeling, vigorous brushwork, and a search for expression that goes beyond realistic depiction of a view. It is now in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Painter

Vincent van Gogh

Date

1890

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

94 × 74 cm

Museum

Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Movement

Post-impressionism

Genre

landscape painting

Depicts

church building, herb, lawn, Auvers-sur-Oise, église Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption d'Auvers-sur-Oise, woman, path, flower

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