The Church at Auvers

The Church of Auvers is a painting by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh from the year 1890. Located in the Musée d' Orsay in Paris.

History

The image of The Church of Auvers was painted in 1890 in Auvers -sur- Oise. The oil painting on canvas has the dimensions 94x74 cm.

It was built between the 4th and 8th of June 1890 in the last intense creative period of van Gogh and first went into the hands of the painter and physician Paul Gachet, who supervised the artist at this time and the painting later, his son inherited. From whose possession it passed in 1952 in the collection of the Museum Jeu de Paume, which belongs to the Louvre. 1986 was characterized by the Musée d' Orsay. The image is one of the most famous paintings of van Gogh and was frequently reproduced.

Motif

The picture shows the early Gothic church with two Romanesque chapels of the chancel. Although van Gogh, created in his last two months of life, which he spent in Auvers over 70 paintings, he devoted himself to this design only once. The portrait format image shows the church under an oppressive, dark sky against the light; the light source itself is not shown. The glass windows have the same blue as the sky. The perspective is distorted and broken, swinging the lines, details such as the numbers and hands of the clock tower can not be seen. The church acts as monumental as restless. Around the lower third of the picture is occupied by a forked path which converges in the foreground and the two parts of lead past the right and left at the church and include a triangular patch of grass, which corresponds mirror-image -like with the church tower. On the left path to a peasant woman moved in gray-blue dress from the viewer.

In a letter to his sister Wilhelmina on June 5, 1890 van Gogh mentioned this painting, drawing parallels to his studies in Nuenen, where he painted the old tower and the cemetery. The color scheme, so he writes is, however, now become more expressive.