The Church at Auvers

The Church at Auvers was painted by Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh in 1890. The Church at Auvers — along with other canvases such as The Town Hall at Auvers and several paintings of small houses with thatched roofs — are reminiscent of scenes from the northern landscapes of his childhood and youth. A certain nostalgia for the north had already been apparent in his last weeks at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence: in a letter written a coupl... More

The Church at Auvers was painted by Dutch post-impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh in 1890. The Church at Auvers — along with other canvases such as The Town Hall at Auvers and several paintings of small houses with thatched roofs — are reminiscent of scenes from the northern landscapes of his childhood and youth. A certain nostalgia for the north had already been apparent in his last weeks at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence: in a letter written a couple of weeks before his departure, he wrote "While I was ill I nevertheless did some little canvases from memory which you will see later, memories of the North" He specifically refers to similar work done back at Nuenen when he describes this painting in a letter to his sister Wilhelmina: The "simple deep blue" was also used in Portrait of Adeline Ravoux, painted in the same short period in Auvers-sur-Oise. The foreground of The Church at Auvers is brightly lit by the sun, but the church itself sits in its own shadow, and "neither reflects nor...

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