Daubignys Garten

Charles Daubigny was a landscape painter of the older generation whom Van Gogh admired all his life, and it was partly Daubigny's memory that drew him to Auvers-sur-Oise in 1890, the village where the older man had lived and died. In his last weeks Van Gogh painted the garden behind Daubigny's house, by then kept by the painter's widow. He made more than one version. For an early attempt he had no proper canvas to hand and worked on a striped tea towel, priming it pink so the greens would sing against it. This one, on canvas, sets the flowerbeds and the pale house under a broad sky. He named it to Theo in a July letter as one of the large canvases he cared most about, less than three weeks before his death at the end of that month.