.
![transistoradio: Vincent van Gogh, Tree Roots (1890), oil on canvas, 100 x 50 cm. Collection of Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Via WikiPaintings.]()
Tree Roots: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
![Tree roots - Vincent van Gogh]( "Tree roots - Vincent van Gogh")
Tree Roots: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
-- The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting, with Notes on the Techniques of the Old Masters: Max Doerner, 1934
![File:Vincent van Gogh - Tree Roots and Trunks (F816).jpg]()
Tree Roots: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
...this amazing painting –- one of the very greatest (and least noticed) masterpieces from the founding moment of modernism –- is yet another experiment in the independent vitality of painted line and colour, as well as the uncountable force of nature. Almost lost within it -– as in Undergrowth With Two Figures -– are allusions to and repudiations of, the exhausted traditions of landscape...
...The view is therefore bipolar: simultaneously that of the rabbit and the hawk. Colours -– wheat-gold, clay-brown -– tease the eye with possibilities of making sense of a field or a hill, but then scramble them into chaos. The usual aesthetic markers –- beauty and ugliness –- have been made meaningless. In Tree Roots the painted forms rap against the visual panes of our windows, as if trying to crash through the glass. In other paintings from these last weeks in Auvers the interior of the field –- green or gold stalks -– occupies the entirety of the visual field like a curtain. Without a beginning or an end this infinity of growing matter closes over us. It’s the ultimate compression of heaven and earth, a live burial within the engulfing sea of creation.
[This] may well be another view from inside Vincent’s hectic brain: all knots and strangling thickets, knobbly growths, bolting ganglia, claw-like forms, and pincers the look more skeletal than botanical... But this amazing painting – one of the very greatest (and least noticed) masterpieces from the founding moment of modernism -– is yet another experiment in the independent vitality of painted line and colour, as well as the uncontainable force of nature.
-- Simon Schama: on van Gogh's Tree Roots in Power of Art, 2006
![]()
![Vincent van Gogh - Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (Cincinnati Art Museum) Van Gogh: Up Close at Philadelphia Museum of Art | by mbell1975]()
Undergrowth with Two Figures: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890; image by mbell1975, 5 May 2012 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
!["Undergrowth with Two Figures" - detail | by hoobie3]()
Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by hoobie 3, 16 March 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
![brushwork | by !♥! Terri Viltrakis]()
![]()
Van Gogh's brush strokes: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (taken at Cincinnati Art Museum): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011
![Van Gogh's Brush Strokes | by elycefeliz]()
Van Gogh's Brush Strokes."The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting." Undergrowth with Two Figures, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890 (detail): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011
![]()
Van Gogh's brush strokes: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (taken at Cincinnati Art Museum): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011
![]()
Van Gogh's brush strokes: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (taken at Cincinnati Art Museum): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011
![]()
![Undergrowth with Two Figures - detail | by hoobie3]()
Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail of brushwork): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by hoobie 3, 16 March 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
![Undergrowth with Two Figures - detail | by hoobie3]()
Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail of brushwork): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by hoobie 3, 16 March 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
![Cincinnati Art Museum | by renzodionigi]()
Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail of brushwork): Vnicent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by renzo dionigi, 10 November 2009 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
![Cincinnati Art Museum | by renzodionigi]()
![]()
Bank of the Oise at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Ois, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit)
![]()
Van Gogh's Bank of the Oise at Auvers, detail (taken at Detroit Institute of Art): photo by Maia C, 3 September 2010
![Van Gogh (detail) | by Martin Beek]()
Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Martin Beek, 20 July 2014
![Van Gogh (detail) | by Martin Beek]()
Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Martin Beek, 20 July 2014
![Bank of the Oise at Auvers | by ellenm1]()
Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by ellenm1, 23 January 2010
![Vincent van Gogh - Bank of the Oise at Auvers (1890) | by Quick fix]()
Bank of the Oise at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Quck fix, 6 July 2012
![Van Gogh detail | by Martin Beek]()
Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Martin Beek, 20 July 2014
![]()
Thatched Cottage in Cordeville: Vincent van Gogh, June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
![]()
Landscape with Carriage and Train in the Background: Vincent van Gogh, June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 72 x 90 cm (Pushkin Museum, Moscow)
Vincent van Gogh to his mother, on the painting Landscape with Carriage and Train in the Background, Auvers-sur-Oise, 12 June 1890:
![]()
Vineyards with a View of Auvers: Vincent van Gogh,June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 64 x 80 cm (Art Museum, Saint Louis)
![]()
The Church at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 94 x 74 cm (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
![van Gogh museum Amsterdam | by zutaten]()
Van Gogh texture (taken at Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam): photo by zutaten, 30 October 2013
![painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot]()
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
![painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot]()
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
![painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot]()
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
![]()
Van Gogh: detail of brushstrokes: photo by torpenhow3, 21 April 2011
![]()
Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Reape, detail (taken at Toledo Museum of Art): photo by Mario Q (aka MichSt), 9 February 2008
![painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot]()
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009![painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot]()
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
![painted by van Gogh | by dacarrot]()
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
![van Gogh museum Amsterdam | by zutaten]()
Van Gogh texture (taken at Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam): photo by zutaten, 30 October 2013
![van Gogh museum Amsterdam | by zutaten]()
![Netherlands-3963 - Van Gogh's Palette | by archer10 (Dennis) (50M Views)]()
Vincent van Gogh's palette, with tubes of paint. "The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.": photo by Dennis Jarvis, 20 September 2013
![]()
![]()
Young Peasant Woman with Straw Hat Sitting in the Wheat: Vincent van Gogh,June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 93 x 74 cm (Private collection)
![]()
Young Peasant Woman with Straw Hat Sitting in the Wheat: Vincent van Gogh,June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 93 x 74 cm (Private collection)
![]()
Two Women Crossing the Fields: Vincent van Gogh,July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on paper on canvas, 30 x 60 cm (MacNay Art Museum, San Antonio)
![]()
![House at Auvers, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1890 | by Alaskan Dude]()
House at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, summer 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas; photo by Frank Kovalchek, 28 October 2011 (The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.)
![]()
![]()
Field with Wheat Stacks: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise. oil on canvas, 50 x 100 cm (Private collection)
![]()
Wheat Fields: The Plain of Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 50 x 100 cm (Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna)
![]()
Wheat Field with Crows: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 50.5 x 103 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
![]()
Wheat Field under Clouded Sky: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 50 x 101 cm (Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam)
-- Emile Bernard to Albert Aurier, Paris, 2 August 1890
![]()
Landscape at Auvers in the Rain: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 48.3 x 99 cm (National Museum of Wales)
![korenaren. Vincent van Gogh 1890-detail | by efraa]()
![]()
I...Tree Roots
Tree Roots: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
Van Gogh had already made several drawings of tree roots in The Hague in 1882. He wrote at the time of his wish ‘to express something of life’s struggle […] in those gnarled black roots’. It is tempting to see the same symbolism in these twisted tree roots, painted eight years later.
The work seems to consist at first sight of a jumble of bright colours and abstract forms, prompting some art historians to identify Van Gogh as an important forerunner of abstract art. If you keep looking, however, you make out the tree roots, plants and leaves, and beneath them the brown and yellow of the sandy forest floor, all laid down on the canvas with powerful brushstrokes and oily gobs of paint.
Many people believe that the more dramatic Wheatfield with Crows is Van Gogh’s final work. This colourful painting is a much likelier candidate, however, as he was unable to complete it, which helps explain its irregular, unfinished character. Theo’s brother-in-law, Andries Bonger, described it as follows in a letter: ‘The morning before his death, he had painted an underwood [sous-bois], full of sun and life.’
-- Van Gogh Museum
Tree Roots: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
Technique must be born of inner necessity. When Van Gogh at one time, in order to achieve the plastic character of the roots of a tree, squeezed oil directly from a tube on his picture, it seemed to him the best means of expressing what moved him at the moment in nature. That technique is the best which permits the artist to express what he has to say as directly and convincingly as possible.
-- The Materials of the Artist and Their Use in Painting, with Notes on the Techniques of the Old Masters: Max Doerner, 1934
Tree Roots: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
...The view is therefore bipolar: simultaneously that of the rabbit and the hawk. Colours -– wheat-gold, clay-brown -– tease the eye with possibilities of making sense of a field or a hill, but then scramble them into chaos. The usual aesthetic markers –- beauty and ugliness –- have been made meaningless. In Tree Roots the painted forms rap against the visual panes of our windows, as if trying to crash through the glass. In other paintings from these last weeks in Auvers the interior of the field –- green or gold stalks -– occupies the entirety of the visual field like a curtain. Without a beginning or an end this infinity of growing matter closes over us. It’s the ultimate compression of heaven and earth, a live burial within the engulfing sea of creation.
[This] may well be another view from inside Vincent’s hectic brain: all knots and strangling thickets, knobbly growths, bolting ganglia, claw-like forms, and pincers the look more skeletal than botanical... But this amazing painting – one of the very greatest (and least noticed) masterpieces from the founding moment of modernism -– is yet another experiment in the independent vitality of painted line and colour, as well as the uncontainable force of nature.
-- Simon Schama: on van Gogh's Tree Roots in Power of Art, 2006
Tree Roots: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 50.3 x 100.1 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
II...Undergrowth with Two Figures
Undergrowth with Two Figures: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890; image by mbell1975, 5 May 2012 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
Then undergrowth, violet trunks of poplars which cross the landscape perpendicularly like columns. The depths of the undergrowth are blue, and under the big trunks the flowery meadow, white, pink, yellow, green, long russet grasses and flowers.
-- Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh and Jo van Gogh-Bonger, Auvers-sur-Oise, Wednesday, 2 July 1890
Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by hoobie 3, 16 March 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890; image by Terri Viltrakis, 17 March 2007 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
![]()
Texture of Undergrowth with Two Figures by Vincent van Gogh, painted June 1890, one month before his death: photo by erkaflugge, 2 April 2014( Cincinnati Art Museum)
![]()
Undergrowth with Two Figures: Vincent van Gogh. Auvers-sur-Oise, late June 1890, oil on canvas, 50 x 100.5 cm: photo by David Lewis-Baker, 24 April 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
Texture of Undergrowth with Two Figures by Vincent van Gogh, painted June 1890, one month before his death: photo by erkaflugge, 2 April 2014( Cincinnati Art Museum)
Undergrowth with Two Figures: Vincent van Gogh. Auvers-sur-Oise, late June 1890, oil on canvas, 50 x 100.5 cm: photo by David Lewis-Baker, 24 April 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
Van Gogh's brush strokes: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (taken at Cincinnati Art Museum): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011
Van Gogh's Brush Strokes."The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting." Undergrowth with Two Figures, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890 (detail): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011
Van Gogh's brush strokes: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (taken at Cincinnati Art Museum): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011
Van Gogh's brush strokes: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (taken at Cincinnati Art Museum): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011
Van Gogh's brush strokes: Undergrowth with Two Figures, 1890 (taken at Cincinnati Art Museum): photo by elycefeliz, 4 February 2011
Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail of brushwork): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by hoobie 3, 16 March 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail of brushwork): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by hoobie 3, 16 March 2011 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
Undergrowth with Two Figures (detail of brushwork): Vnicent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, June/July 1890; image by renzo dionigi, 10 November 2009 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
Undergrowth with Two Figures: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890; image by renzo dionigi, 10 November 2009 (Cincinnati Art Museum)
III...Bank of the Oise at Auvers
Bank of the Oise at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Ois, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit)
Van Gogh's Bank of the Oise at Auvers, detail (taken at Detroit Institute of Art): photo by Maia C, 3 September 2010
Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by ellenm1, 23 January 2010
Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Martin Beek, 20 July 2014
Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Martin Beek, 20 July 2014
Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by ellenm1, 23 January 2010
Bank of the Oise at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Quck fix, 6 July 2012
Bank of the Oise at Auvers (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 74 x 94 cm (Institute of Arts, Detroit); photo by Martin Beek, 20 July 2014
IV...Auxers and environs: views
Thatched Cottage in Cordeville: Vincent van Gogh, June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 73 x 92 cm (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
Landscape with Carriage and Train in the Background: Vincent van Gogh, June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 72 x 90 cm (Pushkin Museum, Moscow)
Yesterday in the rain I painted a large landscape, showing fields as far as one can see, looked at from a height, different kinds of green growth, a potato field of a sombre green, between the regular beds the rich violet earth, on one side a field of peas in white bloom, then a field of clover with pink flowers and the little figure of a mower, a field of long and ripe grass somewhat reddish in tone, then various kinds of wheat, poplars, on the horizon a last line of blue hills, along the foot of which a train is passing, leaving behind it an immense trail of white smoke over all the green vegetation. A white road crosses the canvas. On the road a little carriage, and white houses with harshly red roofs by the side of this road.
Vincent van Gogh to his mother, on the painting Landscape with Carriage and Train in the Background, Auvers-sur-Oise, 12 June 1890:
Vineyards with a View of Auvers: Vincent van Gogh,June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 64 x 80 cm (Art Museum, Saint Louis)
The Church at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 94 x 74 cm (Musée d'Orsay, Paris)
V...Texture and Palette
Van Gogh texture (taken at Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam): photo by zutaten, 30 October 2013
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
Van Gogh: detail of brushstrokes: photo by torpenhow3, 21 April 2011
Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Reape, detail (taken at Toledo Museum of Art): photo by Mario Q (aka MichSt), 9 February 2008
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
Van Gogh texture: photo by dacarrot, 23 June 2009
Van Gogh texture (taken at Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam): photo by zutaten, 30 October 2013
Vincent van Gogh's palette, with tubes of paint. "The only time I feel alive is when I'm painting.": photo by Dennis Jarvis, 20 September 2013
VI..."...that immense plain with wheat fields up as far as the hills, boundless as the ocean..."
Young Peasant Woman with Straw Hat Sitting in the Wheat: Vincent van Gogh,June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 93 x 74 cm (Private collection)
Young Peasant Woman with Straw Hat Sitting in the Wheat: Vincent van Gogh,June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 93 x 74 cm (Private collection)
Two Women Crossing the Fields: Vincent van Gogh,July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on paper on canvas, 30 x 60 cm (MacNay Art Museum, San Antonio)
Wheat Field with Auvers in the Background: Vincent van Gogh, Auxers-sur-Oise, summer 1890, oil on canvas, 44 × 51.5 cm (Collection of the Musées d'art et d'histoire, Geneva)
House at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, summer 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas; photo by Frank Kovalchek, 28 October 2011 (The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.)
House at Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, summer 1890, oil on canvas, 48.6 × 62.9 cm (The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C)
Field with Wheat Stacks: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise. oil on canvas, 50 x 100 cm (Private collection)
Wheat Fields: The Plain of Auvers: Vincent van Gogh, June 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 50 x 100 cm (Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna)
So -- having arrived back here, I have set to work again -- although the brush is almost falling from my fingers - and because I knew exactly what I wanted to do, I have painted three more large canvases. They are vast stretches of corn under troubled skies, and I did not have to go out of my way very much in order to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness. I hope you will be seeing them soon since I'd like to bring them to you in Paris as soon as possible. I'm fairly sure that these canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words, that is, how healthy and invigorating I find the countryside.
Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, c. 10 July 1890
Wheat Field with Crows: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 50.5 x 103 cm (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
I myself am quite absorbed in that immense plain with wheat fields up as far as the hills, boundless as the ocean, delicate yellow, delicate soft green, the delicate purple of a tilled and weeded piece of ground, with the regular speckle of the green of flowering potato plants, everything under a sky of delicate tones of blue, white, pink and violet. I am in a mood of almost too much calm, just the mood needed for painting this.
-- Vincent van Gogh to his parents, Auvers-sur-Oise, c. 10-14 July 1890
Wheat Field under Clouded Sky: Vincent van Gogh, July 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 50 x 101 cm (Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam)
Our dear friend Vincent died four days ago.
I think that you will have already guessed the fact that he killed himself.
On Sunday evening he went out into the countryside near Auvers, placed his easel against a haystack and went behind the chateau and fired a revolver shot at himself. Under the violence of the impact (the bullet entered his body below the heart) he fell, but he got up again, and fell three times more, before he got back to the inn where he was staying (Ravoux, place de la Mairie) without telling anyone about his injury. He finally died on Monday evening, still smoking his pipe which he refused to let go of, explaining that his suicide had been absolutely deliberate and that he had done it in complete lucidity. A typical detail that I was told about his wish to die was that when Dr. Gachet told him that he still hoped to save his life, he said, “Then I'll have to do it over again.” But, alas, it was no longer possible to save him….
On Wednesday 30 July, yesterday that is, I arrived in Auvers at about 10 o'clock. His brother, Theodore van ghohg [sic], was there together with Dr. Gachet. Also Tanguy (he had been there since 9 o'clock). Charles Laval accompanied me. The coffin was already closed, I arrived too late to see the man again who had left me four years ago so full of expectations of all kinds… The innkeeper told us all the details of the accident, the offensive visit of the gendarmes who even went up to his bedside to reproach him for an act for which he alone was responsible…etc…
On the walls of the room where his body was laid out all his last canvases were hung making a sort of halo for him and the brilliance of the genius that radiated from them made this death even more painful for us artists who were there. The coffin was covered with a simple white cloth and surrounded with masses of flowers, the sunflowers that he loved so much, yellow dahlias, yellow flowers everywhere. It was, you will remember, his favourite colour, the symbol of the light that he dreamed of as being in people's hearts as well as in works of art.
Near him also on the floor in front of his coffin were his easel, his folding stool and his brushes.
-- Emile Bernard to Albert Aurier, Paris, 2 August 1890
Landscape at Auvers in the Rain: Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, July 1890, oil on canvas, 48.3 x 99 cm (National Museum of Wales)
Ears of Wheat (detail): Vincent van Gogh, Auvers-sur-Oise, Summer 1890, oil on canvas; image by marlie bouten, 29 June 2009 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
The small attic room in Auvers-sur-Oise where Vincent van Gogh lived and died: photographer unknown, c. 1950s, via T. F. Simon: Vincent van Gogh and Auvers-sur-Oise