Houses at Auvers

“Auvers is very beautiful, among other things a lot of old thatched roofs, which are getting rare…for really it is profoundly beautiful, it is the real country, characteristic and picturesque,” Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother and sister-in-law after the painter’s arrival in Auvers-sur-Oise on 20 May 1890. Working in a hamlet called Chaponval in the western part of Auvers, Van Gogh painted a cluster of dwellings nestled amid walled gardens and trees silhouetted against a gray-blue, cloudy sky. These homes still exist (though now altered) along the Rue de Gré.