Here is where Van Gogh painted his last picture before he died

It appears that on the last day of his life, July 29, 1890, Vincent Van Gogh painted Tree Roots, and one of the world’s foremost experts on the Dutch artist, Wouter Van der Veen, has pinpointed the exact location that inspired him for his last painting.

Van der Veen, scientific director of theInstitut Van Gogh, said that he found himself stuck at home, as most people are, because of the health emergency that has affected the whole world, and that it was then that he began to sort through old postcards dating back to the early twentieth century belonging to an elderly lady in Auvers-sur-Oise. In particular, he was struck by one that depicted a cyclist on the side of a path, and the editor recalled at that moment that he had already seen an image of a tree with its roots similar to the one depicted in the painting in question.

Over the next few days, van der Veen zoomed in on that image from multiple angles and compared it to Tree Roots and was himself in disbelief. Everything concurred: those roots depicted in the painting matched the image in the ancient postcard.

The intuition is further strengthened by the words of the brother of Theo Van Gogh’s wife, Andries Bonger, who recounts in a letter that “in the morning, before his death, the artist painted a sous-bois, full of sunshine and life.”

In the director’s opinion, “every element of this mysterious painting can be found and understood through careful observation of the postcard: the shape of the hillside, the roots of the trees and their relationship to each other, the presence of a steep limestone wall.” Indeed, Van Gogh used to depict the surroundings of his home.

“That painting,” van der Veen added, “was painted on the very day of Van Gogh’s death working near the auberge Ravoux, where he had a room. We can think that he started the painting, calmly, with application, in the morning and then continued later, the light that illuminates the roots is that of a late afternoon. And that he then came back from the boarding house to leave the painting and then went out once more. ”His suicide, just in that time frame, between 7:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., shows in my opinion the state of lucidity he was in at the time of ending his days. A situation very far from the image of a drunk man in the throes of a fit of madness," the director concluded.

Pictured: Vincent van Gogh, Tree Roots (1890; Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum)

Here is where Van Gogh painted his last picture before he died

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