The Church at Auvers

The church is seen from behind

Van Gogh arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise, north of Paris, on 20 May 1890. Within a few weeks he painted the village church, Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption, a Gothic building that still stands on a slope above the village.

He did not paint the façade with its main entrance. He chose the chevet, the rounded east end with its chapels and tall windows. From this side the church looks heavy and closed, a mass of stone sitting on the hill, with paths dividing in front of it.

The painting is now in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, one of the best-known works from Van Gogh’s last two months.

He described it to his sister

In a letter to his sister Willemien, written in early June 1890, Van Gogh said he had a larger picture of the village church. He described the building as appearing violet-hued against a sky of simple deep blue cobalt, with stained-glass windows like patches of ultramarine and a roof partly violet and partly orange.

He compared it with the studies he had made years earlier of the old tower and cemetery at Nuenen, his parents’ village in Brabant. Now, he wrote, the colour was probably more expressive. The church links the end of his career with its beginning.

The windows show the sky, not the interior

The great Gothic windows are filled with the same dark blue as the sky behind the church. They do not glow with light from inside, and they do not show coloured glass. They seem to open straight through the building.

Thick, wavering outlines in white, blue and black trace every arch, buttress and window frame. The walls are built from short strokes of grey, blue, violet and green. Nothing is quite straight, and the building seems to bend under its own weight.

A woman walks away up the path

At the lower left, a woman in a white bonnet and dark blue dress walks along the path, seen from behind. She is the only person in the picture, and she is moving away from us.

She gives a sense of scale, making the church look even larger. She also adds a note of ordinary life. Whatever the church might mean, villagers still walk past it on their way somewhere else.

The path divides in front of the church

In the foreground, a sandy path splits into two around a patch of grass and flowers. The left branch bends towards the woman; the right climbs around the side of the building. Neither leads to a door.

The ground is sunlit, painted in pinkish sand colours and bright greens with yellow and white flowers, while the church itself stands in its own shadow under a dark sky. That contrast between the bright ground and the dark mass of the building is the strongest effect in the painting.

Questions about The Church at Auvers

When was it painted?

In early June 1890, a few weeks after Van Gogh arrived in Auvers-sur-Oise and about two months before his death.

Where is the original?

Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

Does the church still exist?

Yes. Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption still stands in Auvers-sur-Oise and can be seen from roughly the same viewpoint.

How large is the painting?

94 × 74.5 centimetres, oil on canvas.

Sources and image credit

• Van Gogh Letters: letter 889, to Willemien van Gogh, June 1890
• Musée d’Orsay: Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise
• Wikimedia Commons: Google Art Project scan

Faithful public-domain reproduction of The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise, View from the Chevet (1890), via Wikimedia Commons (Google Art Project). Detail images are crops of the same historical painting; no reconstruction or upscaling.