Auvers, 1890

The last of the five places, and the shortest: roughly seventy days between arrival and death, with about as many canvases. This catalogue lists twenty-one works whose titles name Auvers, all dated 1890, and this church is among them. The record files it under landscape and under cultural heritage, religious — the building is the subject, not a congregation or a rite.

The palette at the end

Three families are measured here: yellow, indigo and green. Three is more than most works in this catalogue carry, and the presence of indigo alongside yellow is the contrast that the Auvers and Saint-Rémy canvases return to. By 1890 brown and ochre together account for about one work in ten, against roughly seven in ten in 1884.

What the record holds

1890, 74 by 94 cm, held at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. A great deal is said elsewhere about this painting; what the record sustains is a church at Auvers, painted in the final year, now in Paris.