Van Gogh Museum - Daubigny's Garden

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Daubigny's Garden, 1890

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Oil on Canvas, 50.7 X 50.7 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
(Vincent van Gogh Stichting)
F 765

Van Gogh came to Auvers-sur-Oise, a little village around 30 kilometers from Paris, on May 20, 1890. “Auvers is very pretty,” he wrote to Theo, “there is countryside all around, typical and picturesque.” Auvers was an artists’ village, where painters such as Armand Guillaumin, Camille Pissarro and Paul Cézanne had already worked. Charles Daubigny, a painter Van Gogh much admired, had also moved there around 1860. At the time of Van Gogh’s arrival, his widow still occupied their house.

Daubigny’s Garden
Daubigny’s property included a large garden which Van Gogh would eventually paint a number of times. This impressionistic view depicts only a small part of the enclosure, and is a study for two larger paintings he later made of the whole terrain. He made a little sketch of it for Theo, with a description: “In the foreground green and pink grass […]. In the center a rose bush, to the right a little gate […] [and] a row of yellow lindens. The house itself is in the background, pink with a roof of bluish tiles.”

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Auvers-sur-Oise 1890

For the last two months of his life, Van Gogh lived in Auvers-sur-Oise. In late July 1890, he shot himself in the chest, and he died in the presence of his brother Theo.

The Painters' Village

Van Gogh, View of Auvers

Paul Gachet

Van Gogh, Portret of dr Paul Gachet, CORBIS, Musée d'Orsay

Charles Daubigny

The French artist Daubigny was born in Paris in 1817 and trained by his father. He became a popular landscape painter. He specialized in river scenes, and worked regularly at Villerville-sur-Mer, a village on the coast, at the mouth of the Seine. In many cases, he executed his paintings on the spot, in the open air.

Doctor Gachet

In Auvers-sur-Oise, Van Gogh was befriended by Paul Gachet, a doctor, artist and collector, who kept an eye on the painter and also encouraged him artistically.

Only three weeks after his arrival, Van Gogh would write that they had become “great friends.” Van Gogh made a number of portraits of the doctor, a few paintings and an etching – a technique Gachet had taught him. He made a sketch of one of the paintings in a letter to Theo.

Charles Daubigny
Doctor Gachet