Vincent van Gogh, 'Farms near Auvers', 1890

This view of run-down cottages in a rolling green landscape was made at Cordeville, a tiny hamlet on the edge of the sprawling village of Auvers-sur-Oise in a scenic part of the Oise river valley about 17 miles north of Paris.

Farms near Auvers is widely thought to be among the last works, perhaps the second-last painting, made by Vincent van Gogh. If so, it would have been painted around 26 July 1890, just before his deteriorating mental health collapsed and he shot himself. It certainly belongs to a series of pictures in an unusual ‘double square’ format that the artist produced that summer. The canvases measured 50 × 100 cm and allowed him to give a greater sense of breadth to the views. Here, he captured the scene with strong outlines and rapid brushstrokes. There are soft violet shadows in the foreground and bright greeny-yellows in the sunlit fields beyond. He composed the view with a high horizon. One diagonal made by the cottages leads the eye down deep into the valley, the other cutting across it. This creates a crowded jumble of roofs and gables, which seems to merge with the fields on the hillside beyond. 

At the top right of the picture, this merging of shapes and forms is especially pronounced. It is hard to read how the steep roof of the cottage relates to the rest of the landscape. Vincent might have taken his easel and worked up the painting outside before finishing it in his room at a local inn. It may be that Van Gogh was still drafting that part of the painting and never had a chance to resolve it. Certainly, the sky and possibly sections of the horizon line seem to be unfinished.

The last few months in Auvers were among the most productive of the troubled artist’s life. This lively riverside resort was popular with day trippers from Paris, and Impressionist artists Pissarro, Renoir and Cezanne all stayed and painted here. Van Gogh had come both to paint and to be treated by a local practitioner, Dr Paul Gachet.

Despite his fragile health, the gardens, narrow lanes and tumbledown cottages of the village and the wide green fields beyond were an inspiration to him. On 20 May he confessed to his brother Theo and sister-in-law Jo: ‘Auvers is really beautiful – among other things, many old thatched roofs, which are becoming rare. I’d hope, then, that in doing a few canvases of that really seriously, there would be a chance of recouping some of the costs of my stay – for really it’s gravely beautiful, it’s the heart of the countryside, distinctive and picturesque.’