Thatched Sandstone Cottages in Chaponval

Van Gogh painted these old thatched cottages at Chaponval, a hamlet just outside Auvers-sur-Oise, in July 1890. He had left the south two months earlier to be near his brother Theo and under the eye of Doctor Gachet, and he was working at a furious pace, sometimes a canvas a day. He set the heavy sandstone walls and mossy roofs against a sky he stirred into motion with curling strokes, two small figures on the lane below. He thought well enough of it to sketch it into a letter to Theo on 23 July. Six days after posting that letter, he shot himself in the fields nearby.