Church at Auvers Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

Description of Vincent Willem van Gogh’s painting The Church at Auvers

1890 г.

This painting is one of the artist’s last works, painted in oil on canvas. In 1890 Van Gogh settles near Paris, in the village of Auvers, where he lives out the last two months of his life. It was at this time that he created this work of art.

The main place in the landscape is occupied by the church building, drawn very clearly and believably. This can be seen in the actual photographs of the church. Van Gogh paints every window, arrow, and turret on the roof. He even depicts the lattice pattern on the windows of the church. This structural and detailed illumination of the building suggests his proximity to the site, visiting it repeatedly, and memorizing all the details of the construction.

Another detail in the foreground of the painting is the road to the church, which bifurcates and encircles the church on each side. On the road you can see the silhouette of a woman going to prayer. Her image is shown by the artist quite schematically, discreetly and without emphasis on it. Also a lot of space on the canvas is occupied by the image of grass and flowers in it, which surround the road and grow along the entire front of the church.

As always, Van Gogh made his painting extraordinarily vivid and rich. The sky is shown bright blue, just the color of cobalt. The saturated and dark sky gives the painting a kind of unnaturalness, causing a sense of improper lighting. But at the same time it makes the landscape complete and unusually colorful.

The church is shown in a combination of blue, yellow, brown, orange, green and blue colors. Just an incredible riot of color for a quiet, modest building of God’s monastery. The grass and flowers around the church shine in a palette of light green to marshy colors, with splashes of blue and white strokes by the author. The road is dotted with yellow, brown, and orange.

The overall impression of the painting is very mixed. Lushness of colors and richness of the color scheme pleases, but some unnaturalness of the landscape darkens the joy a little.