Two Children

Van Gogh reached Auvers-sur-Oise on 20 May 1890, out of the asylum at Saint-Remy and about 30 kilometres from his brother in Paris. He had 70 days left and worked at close to a canvas a day. This one is from June, two small village children pressed together, on a square canvas 51 centimetres each way. The man supposed to be keeping an eye on his health, Doctor Paul Gachet, was an amateur painter and etcher himself, and van Gogh spent much of that June in and around his house on the hill above the village. The picture then stayed with the Gachet family for more than 60 years. The doctor's son gave it to the French state in 1954, which is how it reached the Musee d'Orsay.