Adeline Ravoux

Van Gogh had roughly ten weeks left to live when he painted this in the summer of 1890. He was lodging at the Ravoux inn in Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, working at a furious pace, some 68 canvases in his 70 days there. Adeline was the innkeeper's daughter, about twelve, set here in profile against a wash of blue. She sat for him only once and disliked the result, complaining that it looked nothing like her. Years later a photograph of her as an old woman showed how right his eye had been. It was Adeline who saw him return to the inn, wounded, on the July night that would end his life.