Van Gogh’s Landscape

Visiting museums was an important part of our daughters’ homeschooling. Museums hold many of our cultural treasures, preserving the paintings, objects, and stories through which we encounter the past. But there is another kind of learning that takes place when we leave the museum and enter the landscape that inspired the art displayed within it.

During our family trip to France, we traveled outside Paris to Auvers-sur-Oise, the village where Vincent van Gogh spent the final weeks of his life. He arrived in May 1890 and, during approximately ten remarkably productive weeks, created about 70 paintings. He found subjects throughout the village: its church, town hall, cottages, gardens, streets, and the wheatfields surrounding it.

One of those subjects was the Auvers town hall. Van Gogh painted the building on July 14, 1890, when it was decorated with flags and banners for Bastille Day. Standing before the actual building allowed us to compare the ordinary scene with the image Van Gogh created. The structure was recognizable, yet his expressive lines, shifting perspective, and movement transformed it into something entirely his own.

As we walked through Auvers, the village became an outdoor classroom. We were not simply viewing paintings removed from their surroundings and displayed on museum walls. We were walking the streets Van Gogh walked and seeing the buildings and countryside through which he moved during his last months. The signs placed near many of these locations allowed us to stand before the subject and study the painting at the same time.

Museums had introduced our daughters to Van Gogh’s art, but walking through Auvers helped them understand where that art began. Connecting his paintings to the village, buildings, and fields that inspired them brought his work to life in a way that a museum alone could not. It deepened their education while giving us a meaningful experience to share as a family.