Two records, almost the same title

The record dates Village Street and Steps in Auvers with Two Figures to 1890. This catalogue holds a second 1890 entry titled Village Street and Steps in Auvers with Figures — one word apart, a separate record, a different size and a different collection. Pairs like that are the reason entries here are matched on records rather than on titles; a catalogue that merged them would report one work where the sources describe two.

What the record gives

The canvas measures 20.5 by 26 centimetres. Of the 333 works in this catalogue with a recorded size, only two are smaller. It is held by the Hiroshima Museum of Art, the only entry here from that collection. The measured palette reads as ochre and yellow.

The last period, in place-names

Twenty-one titles in this catalogue name Auvers, and all of them are dated 1890. Three titles begin with the word village: one dated 1884, in the Nuenen period, and two dated 1890, both naming this street of steps. A word that skips five years and returns twice in the final year is a pattern in the record rather than in the pictures, and it is offered here as exactly that.