Doctor Gachet's Garden in Auvers
The steep, crowded garden of Dr Paul Gachet at Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh spent the last weeks of his life.
Auvers-sur-Oise
The painting depicts a real landscape or cityscape. The precise viewpoint the artist used may be unknown, so the marker shows the general area.
Doctor Gachet's Garden in Auvers — at a glance
- Artist
- Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
- Year
- 1890
- Movement
- Post-Impressionism
- Place
- Dr Gachet's garden, Auvers-sur-Oise, France
- Viewpoint
- The terraced hillside garden — the house and garden survive and are open to visitors
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- c. 73 × 52 cm
- Now at
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Overview
Doctor Gachet's Garden in Auvers is one of the first pictures Vincent van Gogh painted after moving to Auvers-sur-Oise in May 1890, two months before his death. It shows a small, steep, densely planted garden climbing a hillside: cypresses, aloes and yuccas, white and yellow flowers, a wall, and roofs beyond. It is oil on canvas, about 73 by 52 cm, and it hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Where was Doctor Gachet's Garden in Auvers painted?
Scholarship Paul Gachet was a doctor with artistic connections who had a tall house and terraced garden on the rue Gachet (formerly rue Rémy) on the hill above Auvers-sur-Oise, north-west of Paris. He agreed to keep an eye on Van Gogh, who lodged nearby at the Auberge Ravoux. The Maison du Docteur Gachet and its garden survive and are open to visitors as a cultural site; the planting has changed but the terraced layout and the view can be recognised.
What is in the painting?
The garden rises steeply from the foreground. Spiky exotic plants — aloes, a yucca, cypresses — mix with beds of white and yellow flowers along a path and a low wall. A figure in white may be indicated among the greenery near the top. Roofs and a strip of sky close the view. The paint is thick and the strokes follow the growth of each plant.
Look closely
The spiky exotics
Aloes, a yucca and cypresses give the small garden a restless, agitated energy.
The flowerbeds
Beds of white and yellow flowers run along a path and a low wall.
The tipped-up slope
Van Gogh pushes the garden towards the picture surface, leaving almost no sky.
Analysis
Composition and technique
A near-vertical climb of packed planting, the eye pushed up the slope with little sky.
Scholarship Van Gogh tips the garden up towards the picture surface so it reads as a dense tapestry of greens and flower-colour, each plant given its own rhythm of stroke. The exotic spiky forms give it a restless, almost agitated energy.
History & provenance
The painting was among the works Gachet and his family kept and later gave to the French state; it hangs in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Sources
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris — collection entry for Vincent van Gogh, ‘Le Jardin du docteur Gachet à Auvers’ (1890)
- Maison du docteur Gachet, Auvers-sur-Oise (Département du Val-d'Oise)
Related paintings
The Church at Auvers
1890
Van Gogh's church in the same village, painted the following month.
The Hanged Man's House
1874
Cézanne at Auvers in 1873 — the same steep village, seventeen years earlier.
The artist's garden at Giverny
1900
Monet's own garden at Giverny — a very different painter's garden picture of the same decade.
More by Vincent van Gogh
Café Terrace at Night
The Church at Auvers
Starry Night Over the Rhone
Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin
Also connected to Auvers-sur-Oise
The Church at Auvers
