The Church at Auvers Sur Oise

After Van Gogh left the asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence on May 16 1890 he said farewell to the south of France and started on a northward journey. He visited his brother Theo in Paris, and then moved to Auvers-sur-Oise to be treated by Dr. Paul Gachet. It was here that Van Gogh spent what turned out to be the last ten weeks of his life, and in this short time produced over 100 works, including this one. The Church at Auvers — along with other canvases such as The Town Hall at Auvers and several paintings of small houses with thatched roofs — seem reminiscent of scenes from the northern landscapes of his childhood and youth. A certain nostalgia for the north had already been apparent in his last weeks at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence: in a letter written a couple weeks before his departure, he wrote "While I was ill I nevertheless did some little canvases from memory which you will see later, memories of the North".