Collection: Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise The last months

 Musée d'Orsay

October 3, 2023 to February 4, 2024

This exhibition is the first devoted to the works produced by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) during the last two months of his life, in Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris. The exhibition constitutes the culmination of years of research into this crucial phase of the artist's life, and will allow the public to finally appreciate it in its true dimension.

Arriving in Auvers-sur-Oise on May 20, 1890, Vincent van Gogh died there on July 29 following a suicide attempt. Although the painter only spent a little more than two months in Auvers, this period saw an artistic renewal, with its own style and development, marked by the psychological tension born from the new situation but also by the creation of some of his greatest masterpieces. 

Severely tested by the various crises suffered in Arles and then in the Saint-Rémy asylum, Van Gogh moved closer to Paris and his brother Theo to find new creative impetus. The choice of Auvers is due to the presence of Dr Gachet, a doctor specializing in the treatment of melancholy, and also a friend of the Impressionists, collector and amateur painter. Van Gogh settles in the center of the village, in the Ravoux inn, and explores all aspects of the new world available to him, while fighting against multiple concerns linked to his crises, his health, his relationships with his brother, his place in the art world. 

No exhibition has yet been devoted exclusively to this final, yet crucial, stage of his career. In two months, the painter produced 74 paintings and 33 drawings, including iconic works: Doctor Paul Gachet , The Church of Auvers-sur-Oise , and Field of Wheat with Crows . Rich in around forty paintings and around twenty drawings, the exhibition will highlight this period in a thematic manner: first landscapes depicting the village, portraits, still lifes, landscapes of the surrounding countryside. It will also present a series, unique in Van Gogh's work, of paintings in an elongated double square format.