A day with Van Gogh at Musée d'Orsay / L'église d'Auvers-sur-Oise art

The story behind one of our all time favorite art work...

  After staying in the south of France, in Arles, and then at the psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy de Provence, Vincent Van Gogh settled in Auvers-sur-Oise, a village in the outskirts of Paris to be treated by Doctor Gachet, himself a painter and a friend of numerous artists.

 During the two months separating his arrival, on May 21, 1890 and his death on July 29, the artist made about seventy paintings, over one per day, not to mention a large number of drawings.  

 This is the only painting representing in full the church in Auvers that may sometimes be distinguished in the background of views of the whole village. 

 If one compares this painting with Claude Monet's paintings of the cathedral in Rouen, painted shortly afterwards, one can measure how different Van Gogh's approach was from that of the impressionists.  

 Unlike Monet, he did not try to render the impression of the play of light on the monument. Even though the church remains recognisable, the painting does not so much offer the spectator a faithful image of reality than a form of "expression" of a church.  

 The artistic means used by Van Gogh anticipate the work of the fauvists and expressionist painters. 

This work is part of the permanent collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris