Marguerite Gachet in the Garden

A young woman in white stands among roses and vines in her father's garden at Auvers-sur-Oise. Van Gogh painted her in June 1890, a month before his death, and after this picture her father allowed no more sittings.

The story behind the painting

After a year at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Saint-Remy, Van Gogh spent three days in Paris in May 1890 with his brother Theo, his sister-in-law Johanna and their baby. Theo recommended Doctor Paul Gachet of Auvers-sur-Oise, himself an artist and a collector who loved Renoir, Monet, Pissarro and Cezanne. Van Gogh arrived on 20 May 1890 and took room number 5 at the Auberge Ravoux. He wrote that Auvers was gravely beautiful, and that in Gachet he had found a true friend, something like another brother. At the end of June he told Theo he meant to paint Gachet's daughter Marguerite, who was 21, though he believed she was 19.

What to look for

The picture is small, about 46 by 55 cm, and the garden is the true subject as much as the sitter. Writing to his sister Wil, Van Gogh described two studies of Gachet's garden: one with southern plants, aloes, cypresses and marigolds, and the other with white roses, vines and a white figure among them. Look for that white figure, Marguerite, half absorbed into the planting, and for the roses and vines around her. The house and the trees of the family property fill the rest of the scene, painted in the Post-Impressionist manner of his last weeks.

Meaning and intent

Van Gogh had already painted Marguerite at the piano, a work now in Basel, and this garden picture brought her outdoors among the flowers. The sources say the friendship between painter and doctor was close: they became friends almost at once, and Van Gogh planned to spend days working in Gachet's garden. Yet after this landscape and portrait, Doctor Gachet refused any further sittings for his daughter and asked that the friendship end. The canvas holds a quiet, gentle moment that was soon closed off, which gives it a tender, slightly sad weight.

Legacy

Van Gogh painted more than 70 canvases in Auvers in the last 70 days of his life, and died on 29 July 1890, aged 37, after shooting himself in the chest. He gave this picture to Doctor Gachet, who kept it until his death in 1909. Marguerite and her brother Paul-Louis inherited it and gave it to the French state in 1954. It hung at the Jeu de Paume, then moved to the Musee d'Orsay in 1986. Gachet's house and garden are now a museum. Marguerite never married, died in 1949 and lies in the family tomb at Pere-Lachaise.

Lo sapevi?

Painted in June 1890 in Doctor Gachet's garden at Auvers-sur-Oise.
Van Gogh described a white figure among white roses and vines.
Doctor Gachet stopped all further sittings after this painting.
Given to the French state by the Gachet children in 1954; now at the Musee d'Orsay.

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