The Church at Auvers

Catalogue numbers: F 789, JH 2006.

In this painting the church in Auvers has been transformed by the artist into a vision using form and colour. Painted in portrait format, the church towers up before the onlooker like a fortification. The path leading to it forks in the foreground into two narrow paths passing the church on either side. On the path to the left, her back turned toward us, a peasant woman is walking into the distance. The path is bathed in light, while the church is viewed against the backdrop of a dark blue sky that merges with the black-blue of the night sky at the edges of the picture. The brushwork is restless and full of movement, and the forms of the church are distorted in the Expressionist manner.