A trip to Auvers

Auvers-sur-Oise is a sleepy little town on the banks of the Oise, one of the tributaries of the Seine, or vice versa, depending on who you ask. The town is the home of the Museum of Absinthe. Absinthe is a chemically sweet liquor, often bright green, which is served with a caraffe of water to dilute it. Taken straight, it has supposedly hallucinagenic effect, and even diluted, at 70% alchohol, it likely has an effect anyway.

Next to the train station is an excellent bookstore, partially constructed out of old railcars, filled to the gills with old, and useless volumes that seem to date back to the mid-1700's.

But really, the reason anyone bothers to visit Auvers is because of a couple of famous inhabitants who lived there in the late 1800s. It was here that Vincent Van Gogh came to paint in his last summer, 1890. In 70 days he produced 70 canvases, many of them now classics, freezing the town and it's inhabitants in time. Could his daily glass of absinthe be responsible for the vivid colors in these works?

VanGogh came to Paris in May of 1890 directly after being released from the sanitarium at Saint-Remy, in the south of France. His brother, Theo was living in Paris with his wife, and arranged for Vincent to to to Auvers, under the care of Dr. Paul Gachet, a homeopathic therapist.

As the town remains largely unchanged since the late 19th century, and because VanGogh painted so many paintings of the town within the span of a summer, it's possible to retrace his steps through the town, seeing the sights he saw and painted as if through his eyes (although this requires that you drink a glass of absinthe at the local café before starting out.

The church was built in the mid 1700's, on the site of several previous churches. It's spire is one of the landmarks for thetown on the hill overlooking the river.

Vincent lived above a storefront on the main street in the summer of 1890. The building still stands, and the restaurant on the first floor has been preserved down to the pattern of the lace in the windows. The one thing that has changed is the prices. You can no longer buy dinner for 3.50F, as VanGogh could.

Diagonally facing this restaurant is the town hall. On the 14th of July, Bastille day in France, VanGogh captured the decorations around the building. It too has survived, unchanged.

At the top of the hill , just above the church is a small cemetery. It's here that Vincent and Theo are both burried. Vincent died July 29 1890 after shooting himself in the chest while painting in the nearby fields (he lived two days after doing so!). Theo, already in poor health lived another six months, and though originally burried in Utrecht, he was moved in 1914 to be next to Vincent at his wife's behest. Surrounding the walled cemetery are fields of wheat, as well as woods not unlike the ones Vincent painted that summer. Ivy from Dr. Gachet's garden now adorns both graves.
The common myth is that this painting of the wheat fields, because of it's dramatic content, was Vincent's last painting, but the reality is that although it's from late summer (the wheat is ripe), it's not thought to be his last. In reality his last was probably Daubigny's Garden.