Houses in Auvers

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Houses in Auvers: Vincent van Gogh

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Vincent van Gogh Oil Painting - Houses in Auvers

Keywords: Houses, Auvers

Work Overview: Artist Vincent van Gogh
Year Auvers-sur-Oise, June 1890
Catalogue F759 JH1988
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 73 cm × 61 cm (19.7 in × 40.6 in)
Location Toledo Museum of Art

Houses at Auvers is an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh, painted towards the end of May or beginning of June 1890, shortly after he had moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, a small town northwest of Paris, France.

His move was prompted by his dissatisfaction with the boredom and monotony of asylum life at Saint-Rémy, as well as by his emergence as an artist of some renown following Albert Aurier's celebrated January 1890 Mercure de France review of his work.

In his final two months at Saint-Rémy van Gogh painted from memory a number of canvases he called "reminisces of the North", harking back to his Dutch roots. The influence of this return to the North continued at Auvers, notably in F789 The Church at Auvers. He did not, however, repeat his studies of peasant life of the sort he had made in his Nuenen period. His paintings of dwellings at Auvers encompassed a range of social domains.

Vincent van Gogh spent the early 1881–1885 years of his brief ten-year career as an artist painting in the Netherlands at Etten, The Hague, Drenthe, and Nuenen (his last family home). It was in Nuenen that Vincent executed F82 The Potato Eaters, which he considered his first really successful painting, while other early paintings of the time, such as F83 The Cottage (left), attest his sympathy for peasants and their way of life.[1]

Following the death of his father in March 1885 and ensuing difficulties and quarrels with both his family and neighbors in Nuenen, Vincent moved first to Antwerp, Belgium, where he briefly studied at the Academy, and then finally joined his art dealer brother Theo in Paris, France, in March 1886. His move from Antwerp was motivated by worries about his health, suffering a breakdown early in the year.[2]

The two years he spent in Paris with his brother are the least documented of Vincent's career, simply because the main source for Vincent's life are the letters between them and, naturally, they did not correspond when together.[A] Nevertheless, there are abundant sources to show that Vincent participated fully in the artistic life of the city, although he never aligned himself with the Impressionist movement. In particular he came into contact with Paul Gauguin, whom he idolized. By the end of the two-year period, relations between the brothers had soured somewhat and Vincent resolved to leave Paris and settle in Arles in the south of France, where he conceived the project of starting an artists' commune with Gauguin.

Auvers-sur-Oise was a medieval town about 15 miles northwest of the center of Paris. It was only a few roads wide, but extended for miles along the river in both directions, vineyards and market gardens scattered all along its length. Its hamlets were a mix of clusters of thatched houses and farm enclosures. The French painter Charles-François Daubigny first moored his studio barge Botin there in the 1850s, and later purchased no less than three houses in the village as well as another nearby.[11] With the advent of a railway, the town became a tourist center, its population swelling from 2,000 to 3,000 in the summer months. It attracted artists such as Corot, Cezanne and Pissarro, all seeking to capture its rustic charms. Dealers like Theo van Gogh sold thousand of their images.

Van Gogh made no paintings of traditional peasant life, la vie rustique, at Auvers of the sort he had formerly made in Nuenen. His sketchbooks contain perhaps just half a dozen or so quick studies of peasant scenes, such as F1615v Landscape with Peasant Women Harvesting (right), as well as a rather larger number of studies of farm animals such as chickens and ponies. His subjects were landscapes, townscapes, portraiture, and still lifes. His paintings at Auvers imply a range of social domains. Thus his paintings of dwellings range from thatched cottages through to middle-class villas and finally aristocratic châteaus, and these are set within the social spaces of gardens, streets, and the vestiges of feudal domain respectively.[15]

During the months of May, June and July 1890, van Gogh was extremely productive. The letters give accounts of thirty-six paintings that can be dated with certainty to the Auvers period. The 1970 catalogue raisonné lists another fifty or so, of which some may date before Auvers and others may be inauthentic. Even the certain paintings imply a painting executed every other day over the two-month period.[16]

The village captivated him. On his arrival 20 May 1890, he wrote his brother Theo and wife Jo Bonger that "Auvers is really beautiful – among other things many old thatched roofs, which are becoming rare."[L 6] In his letter the following day he adds, "But I find the modern villas and the middle-class country houses almost as pretty as the old thatched cottages that are falling into ruin."[17][L 7]

Van Gogh lodged at the Auberge Ravoux, where he remained until his death in the early hours of the morning of 29 July 1890 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the stomach.

The central house was a townhouse in the hamlet of Chaponval, about a mile west of the Auberge Ravoux. It was situated at 5 Rue de Gré (49°4′16.02″N 2°8′48.94″E) and still exists, although renovated. It belonged to a mason named August Lecroix and was the subject of an earlier 1873 painting by Paul Cézanne titled La maison du Père Lacroix.[19] Hulsker thought Houses at Auvers was painted shortly after van Gogh arrived.[20] De La Faille thought it painted a little later at the beginning of June, citing a letter of 10 June 1890.[L 8]

The two thatched cottages at the left are set at right angles. They reappear in F780 Thatched cottages in Auvers (see below).[21]

Van Gogh was generally meticulous in his depiction of street scenes, a fact that allowed the precise location of the F766 White House at Night to be ascertained, an Auvers painting that was once thought lost but re-emerged in 1995 in the collection of the Hermitage Museum.[22]

Toledo Museum of Art, the holding museum, points to the structural juxtaposition of the blue-tiled roof and the adjacent thatched roof of the house. Vigorous brush strokes, varying in direction, are used to highlight the contrast and textures. By contrast, the trees and garden are represented in the characteristic swirling manner van Gogh developed at Saint-Rémy.[23] Pickvance notes the color scheme is restrained in accordance with van Gogh's return to the North, but also in response to the weather conditions: the sky is laden with clouds and a poplar tree bends to the force of the wind. The paint is applied remarkably thinly in places, and there are bare patches of canvas.[21] Van Der Veen & Knapp remark that at the time of writing (2010), the shutters still retained their original green color.

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