Despite their artistic perfection, it is impossible to distance oneself from a feeling of agony and despair when one views the paintings that Vincent van Gogh created while living and working in Auvers-sur-Oise — a hilly town not far from Paris, where the artist spent the final two months of his brief life.

To celebrate the works of art van Gogh created during these months, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris has organised an exhibition titled ‘Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise: The Final Months.’ No other exhibition anywhere in the world has ever been devoted exclusively to the final days of van Gogh’s life.

However, since most are already well aware of van Gogh’s corpus, it is perhaps more appropriate to delve into the events of van Gogh’s life, especially those last two months.

Born in 1853 in the Netherlands in a well-to-do family, the young van Gogh constantly remained deeply perturbed by his visions of nature — birds, farm animals, woods, trees, harvests and the faces of the people that surrounded him.

As a result, he quickly changed professions from a business agent to a religious missionary, and finally a painter. His anxious curiosities took him to London and then to Arles in Southern France, where he developed a close friendship with Paul Gauguin. Then one day, following a heated discussion with Gaugin about art, van Gogh chopped off the lobe of his own right ear with a razor.

The iconic artist’s creations from the final two months of his life are the focus of an unprecedented exhibition

Following this incident, he was forced to spend a few weeks in a psychiatric centre in Saint Remy in Southern France, where he continued painting, despite his physical handicap and mental illness. Once he was allowed to leave the hospital, he briefly stayed in the Parisian suburb of Asnieres, along the river Seine, once again restlessly creating a number of unusual canvases that are priced at millions of dollars today. Ironically, van Gogh was never able to sell a single one of his works during his own lifetime.

Living miserably in Asnieres, he was finally persuaded by his brother Theo van Gogh to move further up to Auvers-sur-Oise, where he resided and worked. Theo offered his brother a room in his house, with regular meals and all the other necessities of daily life. He also took the responsibility of providing van Gogh with all the art material he needed.

The other person who consistently looked after him was a physician named Dr Paul Gachet, who took care of the artist’s ill health without any charge, and whose portrait is one of van Gogh’s most reputed works.

Once properly housed, he created more than 100 pieces of art in only two months, before committing suicide on July 29, 1890, by shooting himself in the chest with a revolver. His final work was a sunlit wheat harvest, filled with a large number of crows that disturbed him noisily when he was painting.

Despite his brief stay in Auvers-sur-Oise, van Gogh is today reputed to have painted the greatest of his masterpieces there, before dying at the age of 37.

During these last and crucial two months of his life, van Gogh created 74 paintings, including iconic works such as the Portrait of Dr Gachet, Church of Auvers-sur-Oise and Wheatfield with Crows, not to forget his 33 drawings. Another painting that remained ignored for more than a century and was recognised only very recently is Tree Roots, which is also part of the current show at the Musée d’Orsay.

Adding to the museum’s own collection of his works, Musée d’Orsay organisers have succeeded in bringing together 40 paintings and 20 drawings from a number of European museums, thus highlighting van Gogh’s penultimate creations in an astonishingly thematic style rarely seen in an art exhibition previously.

‘Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise:
The Final Months’ is on display at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, France from October 3, 2023-February 4, 2024

The writer is an art critic based in Paris. 
He can be reached at zafmasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, December 3rd, 2023