Auvers, 1890

The record dates The Plain at Auvers to 1890, the last of the ten years. Eighty-four painted works carry that date and twenty-one name Auvers-sur-Oise. The catalogue also holds Plain near Auvers, dated 1890 — two works, near-identical in title, which is precisely the situation a chronological catalogue has to handle by keeping the dimensions and the holding collection attached to each entry.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 73.5 x 92 cm and is held by the Neue Pinakothek in Munich. The measured palette returns green and yellow as the dominant families, the standard reading for 1890: green dominates 50 of the eighty-four works and yellow 62.

Open ground at the end of the arc

Wheat and open fields run through the last three years of this catalogue without a break — thirty-one works carry "wheat" in the title, ten dated 1888, ten dated 1889 and eight dated 1890. The subject survives all three of the southern and northern moves. Of everything in the record, cultivated ground is the one motif that connects the Brabant potato fields at the start of the arc to the plains around Auvers at the end of it.