Chaumes de Cordeville

Thatched cottages heave under a dark blue sky of tangled clouds, trees and grass bending in a strong wind. Van Gogh painted them at Auvers-sur-Oise in June 1890, one month before his death.

The story behind the painting

In May 1890 Vincent van Gogh left the asylum at Saint-Rémy and went to Paris to stay with his brother Theo, where he met his sister-in-law and their baby. He then settled at Auvers-sur-Oise, about thirty kilometres north of Paris, to be looked after by Doctor Gachet. His last weeks there were a period of frantic creation. Cordeville is a hamlet a little apart from the village of Auvers. He painted these cottages in June 1890, one month before his death on 29 July 1890. The French article also gives the title Chaumes de Montcel.

What to look for

The canvas measures 73 by 92 cm. The cottages are painted in a twisting way, as if Van Gogh wanted to swell their volumes, in thick impasto that brings out cool tones: greys, verdigris and greens. Above them a dark blue sky with dishevelled clouds recalls The Starry Night. The thatched house almost disappears into the greens, and the warm tones are gone. Trees and grass seem driven by a powerful wind. Stand close and follow the paint: every roof, bush and cloud seems to be moving.

Meaning and intent

Wikipedia reads the picture as the tormented soul of the painter producing a fantastic and stormy view. It is a description, not a statement from Van Gogh himself, and the source offers no letter about this painting. What the canvas itself shows is a quiet rural subject, a group of old cottages, turned into something restless and alive, with the solid volumes of the houses swelling and the sky churning above them. Frank Herbert later gave it a voice of its own in fiction, as a picture about the wild thread in humans that cannot be suppressed.

Legacy

In 1954 Paul Gachet, son of the doctor who cared for Van Gogh in Auvers, gave the painting to the Louvre. It was shown at the Jeu de Paume before moving to the Musée d'Orsay in 1986, where it is inventory RF 1954 14. In Chapterhouse: Dune, the last book of Frank Herbert's Dune cycle, it is the favourite painting of the Reverend Mother Odrade, who sees in it the impossibility of removing the wild streak in human beings.