Der Garten von Doktor Gachet in Auvers

Van Gogh painted this garden in May 1890, in the last weeks of his life. He had just left the asylum at Saint-Rémy, stopped briefly with his brother Theo in Paris, and settled in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, where a doctor named Paul Gachet agreed to watch over him. This is Gachet's own garden, crowded with cypress, flowers and rooftops pushing up against a narrow strip of sky. In these final months Van Gogh worked at an astonishing pace, close to a painting a day, roughly 70 of them before the end. He died in Auvers that July, on the 29th, a little over two months after standing in this garden.