Exhibition Van Gogh in Auvers. His Final Months

The Van Gogh Museum, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, presents a major retrospective focusing on the final months of Vincent van Gogh’s life.

Van Gogh in Auvers. His Final Months

Van Gogh in Auvers. His Final Months, which opens in May, unites loans from museums and private collections all around the world, including highlights such as The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) and Adeline Ravoux (private collection). This is a remarkable opportunity for visitors to see a large number of works by Vincent van Gogh that have never before been shown together.

The exhibition is a collaboration with Musée d’Orsay: eight paintings from the museum’s collection are on loan exclusively for this extraordinary project.

Van Gogh in Auvers. His Final Months follows Van Gogh from his arrival in Auvers-sur-Oise on 20 May 1890, where he set to work full of hope and fresh ambition, through to his final weeks in July of the same year, when he increasingly struggled with his feelings of failure, loneliness and melancholy. Despite the inspiration that his new surroundings offered him, he decided to end his life just two months after arriving in Auvers. Van Gogh died on 29 July 1890 at the age of 37, and was buried in the village’s cemetery.

A neglected period

This is the first major retrospective to focus on the Auvers period, a short but crucial phase in Van Gogh’s career as an artist. A number of Van Gogh’s most renowned masterpieces date from this time, including Wheatfield with Crows and Doctor Paul Gachet (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), but the work he produced in Auvers is less well known to the broad public then the sun-drenched landscapes that he painted in the South of France.

Remarkable opportunity

The exhibition features fifty paintings and more than twenty drawings made in Auvers. Eight paintings from the Musée d’Orsay, once in the collection of Doctor Gachet, Van Gogh’s physician in Auvers, will come to Amsterdam on loan exclusively for this extraordinary collaborative project, including highlights such as The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise and Self-Portrait.

Another significant loan is Adeline Ravoux, from a private collection. This striking portrait, which Van Gogh painted of the innkeeper’s daughter, has not been on public display since 1955, and is travelling to the Netherlands for the first time.

Van Gogh in Auvers. His Final Months also features a spectacular series of ten panoramic landscapes from Van Gogh’s final weeks. These works, including Fields near Auvers-sur-Oise (Belvedere Museum, Vienna) and Undergrowth with Two Figures (Cincinnati Art Museum) are being united especially for this exhibition.