Auvers sur Oise

On the way home, we decided to stop in Auvers sure Oise.  Due to my poor navigating, it took us much longer to get there than it should of.  Auvers is where Vincent Van Gogh lived out his last days.

Dr. Paul Gachet lived in Auvers-sur-Oise. He was acquainted with the avant-garde artists of the time. Through this connection, Vincent van Gogh moved to Auvers to be treated by himself. Gachet befriended Van Gogh and was the subject of two portraits, one of which, Portrait of Dr. Gachet, was sold at auction for over $80m (£48m) in 1990.

Van Gogh died by a gunshot to the chest. The room on the upper floor of the Auberge Ravoux where he died has been preserved, although no furniture remains. Auvers-sur-Oise is the final resting place of both Vincent and his brother Theo van Gogh, who died six months later.

Van Gogh painted more than a painting a day for the last sixty days of his life, and all of these were done in Auvers sur Oise.  The city has erected permanent posters in front of many of these sites.  You can look at Van Gogh's painting and then see exactly what he saw.  The city has turned a chateau into an exhibit on impressionism.  The exhibit is very state of the art with lots of screens and technology.  I thought it was a bit much at times.  It did provide a good history of what was going on in France at that time, and of what people thought about Impressionism when it was new. 

 We gratefully missed all of the holiday traffic back into Paris.