A few miles northwest of Paris lies the charming town of Auvers sur Oise. The Oise is a river which starts its life in Belgium, crosses northern France before flowing into the Seine. The impressionists loved such riverside spots as Auvers sur Oise, Argenteuil, Croissy-sur Seine, Chatou and of course Giverny where Monet lived and painted his garden and pond. But Auvers sur Oise bears the dubious distinction of the place where Van Gogh spent the last two months of his life, before allegedly commiting suicide in 1890 (I say ‘allegedly’ because there are always countertheories!). And his most famous work from this period is undoubtedly “Wheatfield with Crows” – or “Champ de blé aux corbeaux” in french though Van Gogh didn’t have time to entitle it himself.
John Berger chose this painting in his seminal television series “Ways of Seeing” to illustrate how context can modify the impact of a painting. He introduced it as follows: “Here is a landscape – a cornfield with birds flying out of it. Look at it for a moment in silence. Now supposing I say whilst you look at it : this is the last picture Van Gogh painted before he killed himself”, and he overlaid it with a plaintiff movement of a string quartet (I’m not sure which one). And Simon Schama, in his wonderful series “The Power of Art”, talked about Vincent’s “headlong rush to junk the entire history of landscape painting. Starting with perspective…here perspective is reversed. It’s a road that goes nowhere, and the two flanking paths just seem to rise vertically through the picture like flapping wings. And what are those green borders – grass, a corner of a tree?”.
But artists are sometimes less creative than we credit them for. Despite its notorious pedigree, this is a straightforward painting, rapidly executed, and at a real location. If one walks up towards the cemetery where Van Gogh and his brother Theo now rest, one will cross the cornfields. Crows are everywhere – you almost trip over them – and Van Gogh’s images of the fields around the village really come to life. There is certainly an eerie, ominous feeling about the place – but we are naturally affected by what we know, it’s impossible not to be. We can identify the exact spot where Van Gogh must have set up his easel. It’s a straightforward painting of what was before him, just in his own style of swirling big dabs of paint.
Similarly, compare the almost abstract “Racines d’arbres” (tree roots) which is actually a fair representation of… tree roots. But of course the choice of scene for the painter, just like for the photographer, is also an artistic act!
When we visited the cornfield we were alone (except for a group of Chinese tourists) and the atmosphere was heavy and charged.
What else is there to do in Auvers sur Oise? After you arrive by car (it’s possible but rather a pain to get there by train), the first stop of course is the office de tourisme which can give you some nice ideas of walks and places to see.
Visiting the “la maison de Van Gogh” is a must. He lodged at the l’Auberge Ravoux, and you can sign up to an excellent guided tour (in french or english) of the minuscule bare room in which he slept (perhaps ‘tour’ is not quite the right word), followed by a film and a visit to the bookshop.
But there are plenty of other things to see. There’s a chateau, and at l’Absinthe Café you can sample a small glass of this infamous spirit. It was a favourite of the artistic set back in the day but subsequently banned due to health concerns – it contained a touch of ‘thujone’, a molecule which in large quantities was thought to lead to hallucinations and even madness. I didn’t dare to try any.
It’s very pleasant just to wander around this calm, picturesque village and inspect the reproductions of Van Gogh’s work which are scattered throughout.