Houses at Auvers

Van Gogh painted this within days of arriving in Auvers-sur-Oise, the village north of Paris where he would spend the last two months of his life. He had just left an asylum in the south of France, and Auvers struck him as calm and green. One thing in particular caught his eye and he mentioned it to his brother: the old thatched roofs, already growing rare as newer tiles replaced them. So he walked out to a hamlet on the western edge of town, Chaponval, and painted this cluster of dwellings tucked behind their garden walls. The thatch sits heavy and gold over the houses, the kind of roof he had been glad to find still standing.