Weinberge bei Auvers

Van Gogh painted this in the early summer of 1890 at Auvers-sur-Oise, a village north of Paris where he had come to be near a sympathetic doctor after leaving the asylum in the south. He had about two months to live. In that short stretch he worked at an astonishing rate, more than one canvas a day at times, going out into the fields and vineyards around the village. Here the rows of vines ripple in thick, restless strokes under a bright sky, the whole surface alive and slightly unsteady. He wrote to his brother Theo that the countryside around Auvers was beautiful and that he felt calmer working. He shot himself in one of these fields at the end of July.