Dorfstraße und Treppe in Auvers mit zwei Figuren

Van Gogh painted this in the last summer of his life. In May 1890 he left the asylum at Saint-Remy and settled in Auvers-sur-Oise, a village just north of Paris, under the eye of Dr Gachet, a physician who painted a little and collected art. In the roughly ten weeks he had left he worked at a furious pace, turning out something close to a canvas a day: wheat fields, the village church, portraits, and quiet corners like this one. Here two figures climb a street where the steps and houses seem to lean and ripple, the paint laid down in short, restless strokes. He died in Auvers at the end of July, only weeks after making street scenes like this.