the last moments of an immense painter, an exceptional exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay

On July 27, 1890, Vincent Van Gogh shot himself in the chest in a field in Auvers-sur-Oise, where he had lived since May 20. The Dutch painter died two days later. The Musée d’Orsay is devoting a unique exhibition to these last two months of his life, an intense period of creation, questioning and renewal of his art. An exhibition organized jointly with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Christophe Léribault, the president of the Musée d’Orsay, does not hesitate to speak of a “absolutely exceptional exhibition”. The museum has seven to eight paintings from this period, thanks to the bequest of the son of Doctor Gachet, the doctor who took care of Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise, who became a friend. The condition was that the paintings would never be loaned, unless Van Gogh’s family created a museum. “Paintings as famous as The Church of Auvers where the Portrait of Doctor Gachet do not travel “, indicates Christophe Léribault.

Paintings never seen in Paris

But these paintings could go to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, founded precisely by the heirs of Théo Van Gogh, the artist’s brother. A joint project between the Dutch museum, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and also has seven to eight paintings from Auvers-sur-Oise, and the Musée d’Orsay therefore made it possible to mount this exhibition (already presented in Amsterdam from 12 May to September 3). Thanks to hard-negotiated loans with museums around the world and private collectors who completed the fifteen paintings in their collections, the two museums managed to bring together around forty of the 74 paintings painted by Van Gogh in the last two months of his life. , some of whom we had never seen in Paris. The exhibition is also the result of four years of a long investigation “on the chronology of the works and their location”says Emmanuel Coquery, the curator of the exhibition.

During his last two months, Van Gogh painted a painting a day. He stayed at the Ravoux inn, in the center of Auvers-sur-Oise, where he resumed the canvases started on the motif, in the surrounding nature, on the banks of the Oise or in the village, which he found “seriously beautiful”. The first large room of the exhibition is dazzling. We could stay for hours in front of the vibrant colors of the Houses of the Boston Museum or the Farms from Helsinki to the strange sky. He put blue on a white background. “He experiences very confusing things, notes Emmanuel Coquery. This sky painted on the clouds is the opposite of what everyone did before him.”

“Pictures present themselves to my vision”

Van Gogh spoke a lot about his art, in the numerous letters he wrote, especially to his brother Théo. The exhibition is punctuated with quotes and a small room is devoted to this abundant correspondence. “In this period, his word takes on all the greater weight as it is the period at the end of which he will end his life”, underlines the commissioner. It is important in trying to “understand the meaning of this last step”, even if we will never know exactly why he committed his ultimate gesture. It is therefore mainly a question of “question your vision”. A vision that the artist himself evokes in a letter to Théo: “Vaguely pictures present themselves to my vision that will take time to clarify but it will come little by little.”

“Van Gogh is a painter of motifs, he sets up his easel, he needs the reality of things, we feel something confusing which crystallizes little by little and which takes an artistic form”, says Emmanuel Coquery, who wants to see “how he seizes a visible reality to make it into a plastic motif”.

One of the great themes of this period is the field, empty of human presence, as if to express solitude. Under peaceful skies, bales of hay look like dancers, the grass moves in sweeping movements, dotted with cornflowers. Conversely, under a more intense sky, dotted poppies form a tight red carpet.

Almost all panoramic formats

In May 1890, Van Gogh emerged from a year of internment in an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence after attacks of dementia. If he chose to settle in Auvers-sur-Oise, it is because of the reassuring presence of Paul Gachet, an original doctor, follower of homeopathy, painter and amateur engraver who frequents passing artists, but above all a specialist in melancholy. He becomes a friend and receives Van Gogh for lunch every Sunday. He paints a brilliant portrait of himself, paints his daughter at the piano, as well as Adeline, the daughter of his innkeeper. “The portrait is the thing in painting that moves me most deeply and makes me feel the infinite more than anything else”, wrote Van Gogh who continued his experiments there, in terms of formats or colors.

The exhibition ends in apotheosis, with almost all (11 out of 12) of the panoramic format landscapes (double square, 50 cm by 1 m) that Van Gogh created between June 20 and the end of his life. “It’s the first time that this meeting has been done, and it will never be done again, it’s a unique, exceptional spectacle,” rejoices Emmanuel Coquery. “It’s a kind of exercise on a formal constraint that he gave himself, and which shows that Van Gogh was on the threshold of a new painting,” beyond theme or motif. Which shows “that painting, material and format are elements of language in themselves, that we don’t really need a subject”.

The themes are varied, fields under a thin strip of sky or on the contrary a large stormy sky, haystacks in close-up, farms. The famous Corn field with crowsparticularly intense, had not come to Paris since 1953. In the artist’s own words, the painting expresses “sadness, extreme loneliness”. A Landscape at dusk casts a powerful golden, shimmering light. In a surprising Undergrowth with two figures a couple gets lost behind a perfect alignment of poplars.

“Tree Roots”, the last painting

The last painting painted by Van Gogh, on the morning of his suicide, is particularly moving. It had never been shown in Paris. He represents in an almost abstract way blue tree roots intertwined in close-up. This is the expression “of a man in search of emotional roots”, comments Emmanuel Coquery, who nevertheless wants “kill the myth of the mad, cursed, unrecognized artist”.

“The painter did not paint in a state of crisis, there is no trace of madness in his painting”, even if there is “a fear of the occurrence of new crises which causes a state of instability, fragility, anxiety which obviously influences his painting”, explains the commissioner.

And then, at the moment he died, the artist experienced strong recognition from his peers, as evidenced by letters of condolence from Toulouse-Lautrec, Bernard, Gauguin, Eugène Carrière. He was favored by some critics, exhibited several times and began to sell.

Artificial intelligence and virtual reality

The exhibition aims to reach all audiences. Because, says Emmanuel Coquery, Van Gogh is “a popular painter” who himself wanted “speak to the widest audience” and dreamed of having an exhibition in a café. Small documentary rooms, which tell the story of Doctor Gachet, describe Auvers-sur-Oise, or evoke Van Gogh and cinema punctuate the exhibition. An artificial intelligence terminal allows us to question the artist on the basis of his letters, and a virtual reality experience takes us into the painter’s world and his palette.

Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise, the last months
Orsay Museum
Esplanade Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, 75007 Paris
Every day except Monday, 1^er May and December 25, 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., late night on Thursday until 9:45 p.m.
€16 / €13
From October 3, 2023 to February 4, 2024