La Maison du père Pilon

Van Gogh got off the train at Auvers-sur-Oise on 20 May 1890, just out of the asylum at Saint-Remy and placed under the eye of Doctor Gachet, a physician who knew the Impressionists and etched and painted himself. He took a room above the Ravoux inn for three francs fifty a day. In his first letter home he told Theo that Auvers was really beautiful, and singled out the old thatched roofs, which he said were becoming rare. The village sat half an hour from Paris by train and was filling up with new houses built by people who could commute. This one belonged to a villager known as pere Pilon. Van Gogh kept up close to a canvas a day through June and into July.