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Vincent Van Gogh   1853-1890 LES CHAUMIERES A AUVERS Oil on canvas 13 1/4 by 16 3/8 in. 33.7 by 41.6cm Painted in June, 1890. Van Gogh left the asylum in Saint-Remy in May of 1890 and traveled to Paris to spend a few hectic days with his brother Theo. Not used to the pace of the city, van Gogh again headed out to the country to Auvers-sur-Oise, a village outside Paris along the Oise, a river that feeds into the Seine. He wrote to his sister in early June: "At the moment I am still afraid of the noise and the bustle of Paris, and I immediately went off into the country- to an old village. Here there are moss-covered thatched roofs which are superb, and which I am certainly going to do something with" (letter W21). The thatched houses of Auvers had clearly captured van Gogh's attention, as he also described them to Theo in a letter written soon after his arrival: "Auvers is very beautiful, among other things a lot of old thatched roofs, which are getting rare. So I would hope that by getting down to do some canvases of this there will be a chance of recovering the expenses of my stay- for really it is profoundly beautiful; it is the real country, characteristic and picturesque" (letter 635). Over the next few months van Gogh did indeed 'get down to do some canvases' that concentrated on the picturesque effects of the thatched roofs in Auvers. In Les maisons a Auvers (de la Faille 805, fig. 1), the thatched roof at lower left provides the theme of the canvas as the roof alternates between an order of parallel strokes and a set of undulating curves, a comparison of the natural and the man made. Van Gogh emphasized the irregular patterns of the roofs of the peasant houses in La ferme avec deux personnages (de la Faille 806, fig. 2), in which the house takes on the natural form of a rock outcropping, blending in seamlessly with the surrounding landscape. Similarly in Les chaumieres (de la Faille 750, fig. 3), the thatched roofs in the center of the painting relate to the sweeping diagonal curves of the landscape in the foreground, while maintaining a distinct order of parallel strokes. This depiction of the roofs in Auvers develops further in van Gogh's watercolors, as in Les chaumieres (de la Faille 1640, fig. 4) in which the curving strokes of the watercolor brush move from the landscape in the foreground through the thatched roofs and then to the more expressive patterns of the trees behind the houses. This integration of the peasant houses within the landscape can then be seen in Les chaumieres a Cordeville (de la Faille 792, fig. 5) in which the roofs dominate the composition, unifying the curves of the landscape in the foreground with the trees in the background and the expressive depiction of the sky. Although the last three months of van Gogh's life were troubled, his painting and his writing were as lucid as ever. In a comparison of two of his paintings van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in June of 1890: "I have noticed that this canvas goes very well with another horizontal one of wheat, as one canvas is vertical and in pink tones, the other pale green and greenish-yellow, the complementary of pink; but we are still far from the time when people will understand the curious relation between one fragment of nature and another, which all the same explain each other and enhance each other" (letter 645). Also in June of 1890, van Gogh wrote to his sister that in his portraits he attempted to achieve his goal not through "photographic resemblance, but by means of our impassioned expressions- that is to say using our modern taste for color as a means of arriving at the expression and the intensification of the character" (letter W22). The juxtapositions of form and color, in other words, as well as the emotional expression that marks much of van Gogh's painting in Auvers, should be seen as the artist's conscious attempts to create a new mode of painting. In the present work, van Gogh presents a number of these expressive juxtapositions and intensifications, continuing the theme of the thatched roofs he had developed during his first few weeks in Auvers. In Les Chaumieres a Auvers which van Gogh referred to in a letter of June 10 (letter 640)- "Since Sunday I have two studies of houses among the trees"- he uses especially expressive strokes of paint to describe the undulating curves of the thatched roofs, a sequence of curves that he then echoes in the flowing trees in the background. Van Gogh also uses this pattern of curves to connect the two peasant women in the foreground to the rest of the composition. The figure on the left, for instance, is surrounded by areas of green and yellow that describe her connection to the landscape, while the figure on the right is conveyed in curving lines that relate directly to the thatchwork in the center of the painting. Van Gogh explored the theme of the thatched roof to investigate this very juxtaposition, the relationship of man and nature, the extent to which the houses and the peasants themselves express the surrounding landscape, different fragments that "explain each other and enhance each other." Rather than a quiet, photographic description, however, Les Chaumieres a Auvers is an "impassioned expression," a lively set of curving brushstrokes that portray the intensity of van Gogh's engagement with the landscape of Auvers. Provenance: Dr. Paul Gachet, Auvers (1890-1909) Erwin D. Swann, Riegelsville, Pennsylvania Wildenstein & Co., New York Acquired by Reader's Digest in 1951 Exhibited: Montreal, Museum of Fine Arts, Six Centuries of Landscape, 1952 New York, Wildenstein & Co., Vincent Van Gogh, 1955, no. 74 Los Angeles, Municipal Art Gallery, Vincent Van Gogh, 1957, no.24 New York, Wildenstein & Co., Modern French Painting, 1962 New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., Reader's Digest Collection, 1963, p. 34 Tokyo, Palaceside Building, Forty Paintings from The Reader's Digest Collection, 1966, no. 37 New York, Wildenstein & Co. (traveling exhibition), Selections from The Reader's Digest Collection,1985-1986, pp. 68-69 Auckland City Art Gallery, The Reader's Digest Collection: Manet to Picasso, 1989, pp. 82-83 Literature: J.B. de la Faille, L'Oeuvre de Vincent Van Gogh, Catalogue Raisonne, Paris, 1928, no. 758 W. Scherjon and Jos. de Gruyter, Vincent van Gogh's Great Period, Amsterdam, 1937, p. 195, no. 194 J.B. de la Faille, Vincent Van Gogh, Paris, 1939, p.557 J.B. de la Faille, The Works of Vincent van Gogh, New York, 1970, no. 758, illustrated p. 293 Paolo Lecaldano, L'Opera pittorica completa di van Gogh, De Arles a Auvers, vol. 2, Milan, 1971, no. 816, illustrated p. 229 Jan Hulsker, The Complete van Gogh: Paintings, Drawings, Sketches, New York, 1980, no. 2016, illustrated p. 462 Alfred Nemeczek, "Die letzten Wochen des Malers van Gogh," Art, February 1981, illustrated p. 32 Ingo Walther and Rainer Metzger, Vincent Van Gogh, the Complete Paintings, vol. 2, Cologne, 1990, illustrated p. 646 Giovanni Testori and Luisa Arrigoni, Van Gogh Catalogo completo, Florence, 1990, no. 812, illustrated p. 372 Jan Hulsker, The New Complete van Gogh: Paintings, Drawings, Sketches, Amsterdam, 1996, no. 2016, illustrated p. 463.