Planning a painting trip to Arles, Saint-Rémy, the Netherlands and Belgium

On 30th January 2024 I visited an art exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay called "Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise. His Final Months". Auvers-sur-Oise is a village just north of Paris. This is where Vincent spent the last seventy days of his life. Seventy-four of the paintings and thirty-three of the drawings that he made during those seventy days survive today.

After visiting that exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay, I spent the next two days exploring Auvers-sur-Oise. Looking to see if I could see the things Vincent saw. Then in May 2024 I came back to Auvers-sur-Oise and I painted eight paintings there in seven days.  

For a couple of the paintings I made I was able to stand where I imagined Vincent stood, and the scene would probably have looked very similar to the scene in front of him one hundred and thirty-four years earlier.

In other places where I painted the view was probably very different, either because my vantage point was not the same, because it was another time of the year, or because  the things that had been there had changed or were gone.

On a couple of occasions I painted the river Oise, the feature on which Auvers was  built, but on both occasions I choose to paint a different subject matter to Vincent.

While he was in Auvers-sur-Oise, Vincent became friends with Dr Paul Gachet, who had written his doctoral thesis on melancholia (a historical term for severe, prolonged depression). Dr Gachet was also an amateur artist and Vincent painted at his house on several occasions. The house and gardens are now open to the public, and I was lucky enough to paint there while I was in Auvers-sur-Oise.

Here is a time-lapse film of my painting in Dr Gachet's garden. The soundtrack for this time-lapse is an ambient sound recording I made while there in Dr Gachet's garden.

https://youtu.be/r-MWT18B24c?si=KKcRcMhZXEtrjRzY

On this 2024 visit to Auvers-sur-Oise, I did not try to copy the paintings Vincent had made. I just wanted to immerse myself in the village and see what I would see.

A painting of The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise

I had, though, been to Auvers-sur-Oise once before. On 29th July 2019 I went to Auvers-sur-Oise for the first time and painted the church at Auvers. This time I went with a different intention, to see if I could paint what Vincent saw. I stood and painted at the church from 6 am until 5.30 pm. In my hand I had a card with Vincent's painting of the church on it, and while I stood there I tried to copy it as well as I could. At about a quarter to twelve, I looked up at the clock tower of the church and noticed that the shadows on the slats there were the same as the shadows Vincent painted. Vincent painted this church at a similar time of year, between 4th - 8th June 1890. It might not seem like a lot, but for some reason, seeing that not only was I looking at the same church, but at the same shadows, at that moment it stopped me in my tracks.

Throughout the day I noticed that Vincent didn't block the shadows to capture any particular time of day. While the shadows in the clock tower were consistent with about quarter to twelve, the shadows in front of the church were consistent with about four o'clock, Vincent, it seemed to me, was simply painting what he saw as he saw it. That was just how it appeared while I was standing there throughout that day.

PHOTO of shadows at 4pm which appear consistent with Vincent's shadows.

Here is a time-lapse film I made while I was painting the Church at Auvers-sur-Oise. There is a tune attached to this time-lapse because the idea of recording ambient sound did not occur to me until April 2022. Up to then, all my time lapses had music as a background soundtrack.

https://youtu.be/9wATc9igdog?si=JLTmYTaSFNvRqBSE

What revealed itself to me while I was doing that painting has fascinated me. I think it is time for me to go and see if Vincent van Gogh has anything else to show me. As the trip gets closer, I occasionally wonder whether I have bitten off a little more than I can chew here. "I mean, 'Why bother?' "

Here's why.

In preparing for this trip, I have read books, listened to podcasts and watched YouTube films about Vincent's life, his paintings and his artistic process. I've heard what other people say about how he taught himself, the experiments he made, the things he forced himself to do, the materials and techniques he constantly reflected on and changed, and these people have told me about the physical and mental effort he made to learn how to draw and paint. For me, though, the most reliable and fascinating source of information about Vincent van Gogh was one I wasn't supposed to see... his letters.

Eight hundred and twenty of the letters he wrote survive. Here are just a few of Vincent's words.

"I’ve never had such good fortune; nature here is extraordinarily beautiful. Everything and everywhere. The dome of the sky is a wonderful blue, the sun has a pale sulphur radiance, and it’s soft and charming, like the combination of celestial blues and yellows in paintings by Vermeer of Delft. I can’t paint as beautifully as that, but it absorbs me so much that I let myself go without thinking about any rule".

Letter to his brother Theo, 18th September 1888

"But my colours, my canvas, my wallet are completely exhausted today. The last painting, done with the last tubes on the last canvas, is a naturally green garden, is painted without green as such, with nothing but Prussian blue and chrome yellow."

Letter to his brother Theo, 18th September 1888

"I’ll try to get away from it by studying this question of drawing figures from memory. I’m always frustrated in my best abilities by the lack of models, but I don’t dwell on it — I do landscape and colour without worrying where that will take me."

Letter to his brother Theo, 25th September 1888

"And I think that next year you’ll see the same subjects again: orchards, the harvest, but — with a different colour and above all, altered execution. And that will still continue, these changes and these variations." 

Letter to his brother Theo, 24th September 1888

I will drive to Arles from Kent and plan to arrive in the afternoon on Thursday, 10th September 2026. Vincent arrived there in February 1888 and stayed until May 1889.

After spending a week in Arles, I will move on to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where Vincent spent about a year. I will stay until 23rd September.

After a week back home, on 1st October, I will travel to Belgium and the Netherlands for two weeks, visiting some of the places where Vincent lived and worked during the first thirty-three years of his life and while I am there being nosy, walking, painting and drawing, I might as well take the opportunity to visit a couple of museums that between them hold about 680 of his drawings and 290 of his paintings.

The locations are set; the rest is a blank canvas.

After I recently told a friend about my planned trip, they said, "You are like a dog whose owner has just said 'Walkies'. "