1890-06 · Auvers-sur-Oise · Knot of Intention

The Church at Auvers

The forking road is solid in the painting, never mentioned in the letters. The colour is not naturalistic — and yet truer than naturalism.

F789 The Church at Auvers 1890

Painting

Oil on canvas, 94 × 74 cm. The twelfth-century parish church of Auvers — rough stone walls, triangular roofs, stained-glass windows. He did not paint it as a grey medieval building. The walls are violet leaning toward red, the roof split into violet and orange, the windows ultramarine patches, the sky pure cobalt, the path orange-toned and forking into two. The whole church tilts slightly within the frame, the wall lines are not vertical — like a building about to lift off the ground. Not the portrait of an old building, but the look of a building once lit by colour.

Letter

June 1890. He wrote to Theo: "I have a larger picture of the village church — an effect in which the building appears purplish against a sky of a deep and simple blue of pure cobalt, the stained-glass windows appear as patches of ultramarine blue, the roof is violet and partly orange." Another sentence: "It's more or less the same thing as the studies I did at Nuenen of the old tower and the cemetery, only now the colour is probably more expressive, more sumptuous." He drew the line himself — the Auvers church and the Nuenen old tower, the same motif crossing five years, two completely different colour systems.

Place

Notre-Dame d'Auvers, a few minutes from the Ravoux Inn. Twelfth-century, still on its spot; everyone in the village had walked past it, no one had painted it. He made this in June, less than a month into Auvers and less than two months before the end. It rhymes, across five years, with the Nuenen tower he painted before he understood colour — the same building twice, with a different man behind the easel.

Synaesthetic Precision

He linked this painting to the Nuenen old tower five years earlier — a self-quotation across five years, a clear measurement of what had changed and what had stayed the same. Same motif: the village's old building, a graveyard, the edge of religion. Same structure: stones, cross, ground. What had changed was the colour. Synaesthetic precision turned, here, on a new object — himself. He was using the painting to read his own evolution as a painter.

The Colour Experimenter

"The building purplish, the sky pure cobalt, the windows ultramarine, the roof violet and partly orange." The colour experimenter's most direct recipe. He did not write "the church under sun" or "the church grave"; he listed colours. The whole building is decomposed into a set of five hues, each carrying a piece of form: violet sets the key, cobalt provides the contrast, ultramarine provides accents, orange supplies the temperature counter-example. The most complete colour argument of his Auvers period — a building equals a colour formula.

before

Auvers had Daubigny's garden, had Dr. Gachet, and also this twelfth-century Gothic church.

now

He painted it standing under a deep-blue sky, the road on the ground forking, the building leaning slightly forward. In a letter to his sister he described the effect: the building a violet, set against a sky of a deep, plain cobalt blue. This is not a night scene, but his way of using a non-naturalistic blue and violet to give the daytime church a strange, spiritual charge.

after

He never went back to paint that church again.

Events

1890-06 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 877
Less than a month after arriving in Auvers, he decided to paint the twelfth-century parish church — Notre-Dame d'Auvers
1890-06 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 877
Completed The Church at Auvers. 'The building purplish, the sky pure cobalt, the windows ultramarine, the roof violet and partly orange.' The colour experimenter's most direct recipe
1890-06 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 878
The whole church tilts slightly within the frame — wall lines not vertical, the building seeming to lift off the ground
1890-06 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 877
'It's more or less the same thing as the studies I did at Nuenen of the old tower and the cemetery, only now the colour is probably more expressive, more sumptuous.' A self-quotation across five years
1890-06 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 879
In the letter, linked the Auvers church to the Nuenen old tower of five years before — same motif, two entirely different colour systems

From the Letters

J'ai un plus grand tableau de l'église du village — un effet où le bâtiment paraît violacé contre un ciel d'un bleu profond et simple de cobalt pur, les fenêtres à vitraux paraissent comme des taches bleu d'outremer, le toit est violet et en partie orangé.

I have a larger picture of the village church — an effect in which the building appears purplish against a sky of a deep and simple blue of pure cobalt, the stained-glass windows appear as patches of ultramarine blue, the roof is violet and partly orange.

Letter 877

C'est à peu près la même chose que les études que j'ai faites à Nuenen de la vieille tour et du cimetière, seulement à présent la couleur est probablement plus expressive, plus somptueuse.

It's more or less the same thing as the studies I did at Nuenen of the old tower and the cemetery, only now the colour is probably more expressive, more sumptuous.

Letter 877

Letter Sources

Van Gogh letter records referenced on this page, linked to the Van Gogh Letters Project. vangoghletters.org

Technique Evidence

This work appears as evidence in this site’s technique-evolution axis.

The Burning Seventy Days 1890.05 – 1890.07 Open period F789 / JH2006 Church at Auvers Speed Representative work from the 70-day Auvers burst