The Auvers Church
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| The Auvers Church |
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| Vincent van Gogh , 1890 |
| Oil on canvas |
| Musée d'Orsay |
The Auvers Church is a painting by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh from 1890. It is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.
history
The picture The church of Auvers was painted in Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890 . The oil painting on canvas has the dimensions 94 × 74 cm.
It was created between June 4 and 8, 1890, during Van Gogh's last intensive creative phase and initially passed into the hands of the painter and physician Paul Gachet , who looked after the artist during this time and later bequeathed the painting to his son. In 1952 it came from his possession to the collection of the Jeu de Paume Museum, which belongs to the Louvre. In 1986 it came to the Musée d'Orsay. The picture is one of Van Gogh's most famous paintings and has been reproduced many times.
motive
The picture shows the early Gothic church Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption from the choir side. Although van Gogh created over 70 paintings in the last two months of his life in Auvers, he only dedicated himself to this motif once. The portrait format shows the church under a heavy, black-blue sky in the backlight; the light source itself is not shown. The glass windows are the same blue as the sky. The perspective is distorted and broken, the lines curved, details such as the numerals and hands of the tower clock cannot be seen. The church looks as monumental as it is restless. About the lower third of the picture is taken up by a forked path that converges in the foreground and the two parts of which lead past the church on the right and left and enclose a triangular piece of lawn that corresponds in a mirror image to the church tower. On the left, a peasant woman in gray-blue costume moves away from the viewer.
In a letter to his sister Wilhelmina dated June 5, 1890, van Gogh mentions this painting and draws parallels with his studies in Nuenen , where he painted the old tower and the cemetery. The color scheme, he writes, has now become more expressive.
literature
- Jacob-Baart de la Faille : L'oeuvre de Vincent Van Gogh - Catalog raisonné , Paris 1928
- Paolo Lecaldano: Tout l'oeuvre peint de Van Gogh , Paris 1971
- Arnaud Brejon de Lavergnée and Dominique Thiébaut: Catalog sommaire illustré des peintures du musée du Louvre. II. Italie, Espagne, Allemagne, Grande-Bretagne et divers , Paris 1981
- Isabelle Compin, Geneviève Lacambre and Anne Roquebert: Musée d'Orsay. Catalog sommaire illustré des peintures , Paris 1990
