Farms near Auvers

This dates from July 1890, the last full month of Van Gogh's life. He had left an asylum in the south that May and settled in Auvers, a village north of Paris, under the care of a doctor named Gachet, and he was painting at a furious pace. In early June he wrote to his sister about the mossy thatched roofs around him, saying he would certainly make something of them, and this is that something. The picture is unfinished, and it is thought to be among the very last he ever touched, painted only days before he shot himself on the 29th. The thick curling brushwork on those roofs is the plain motif he had promised her he would paint.