We are drawn to troubled artists (if not too precious); none comes more infamously troubled than Vincent van Gogh, he of the self-inflicted ear loss and of the self-inflicted fatal gunshot. The first occurred in sunny, paradisiacal Provence, the latter in the more subdued northern clime of Auvers-sur-Oise, about twenty miles north of Paris. Now just beyond the edge of Paris’s suburban sprawl, Auvers was at the end of the nineteenth century the rural village where Van Gogh went to receive further treatment for his depression, an ailment no doubt intensified by his continuing lack of success as an artist. It is astonishing to think that, as far as we know, he sold only one significant painting in his lifetime (The Red Vineyards near Arles of 1888), four months before his suicide.

Van Gogh worked at a Stakhanovite rate

Van Gogh’s move north was compelled by medical and personal reasons, not artistic ones. He wanted to be close to Theo, his brother and chief supporter (artistically and financially), who lived in the capital. Vincent’s stay at the psychiatric clinic in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (a hauntingly evocative place to this day) had not ameliorated his condition; indeed, on Christmas Eve of 1889, he had attempted suicide through poisoning—tellingly from the consumption of his own paints. Theo, combining wariness of having his unstable brother stay too long in his own house and solicitude for the artist’s ill health, directed Vincent to the care of Dr. Paul Ferdinand Gachet, a specialist in—and sufferer from—acute melancholia, living in Auvers-sur-Oise. Van Gogh left his southern asylum in May 1890 (his doctor there optimistically or self-servingly declaring him cured) and, via Paris, arrived later that month in Auvers-sur-Oise, where Gachet diagnosed the painter with “unfounded syphilomania.” Here, during the last two months of his life, Van Gogh worked at a Stakhanovite rate, producing some seventy-four paintings (averaging one per day) and more than fifty drawings, without loss of quality; indeed, most of the work is of an astonishingly high caliber, as clearly witnessed in the spectacular and comprehensive exhibition, “Van Gogh in Auvers-sur-Oise: The Final Months” at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

The large range of paintings on display from these intense two months creates an intimate bond with the viewer, who is able to follow Van Gogh’s dramatic shifts of mood during such a short time span. The artist’s letters reinforce his often febrile paintings: during the first two days of his arrival in Auvers, he wrote to his brother that the place is “gravely beautiful, it’s the heart of the countryside, distinctive and picturesque”; three days later, another fraternal letter, this one unsent, has Van Gogh desolately declaring himself a “failure” and unable to “see a happy future at all.” It was around this time that Dr. Gachet, who advised Van Gogh to throw himself into his work (a prescription obsessively and immediately taken), concluded that the artist was beyond cure.

The show’s great triumph is to lead viewers away from the familiar sunny skies and fields of Provence to the entirely different, and less-known, North. On display are two-thirds of Van Gogh’s paintings from this period and over half his drawings, a good number coming from America and private collections. It is an abundance of riches, approximately organized by what might be called farms, flowers, fields, and faces. The rural depictions of the houses and farms of Auvers-sur-Oise are quite beautiful, although The House of Père Pilon (from a private collection) introduces a nervous vision of the landscape. Interestingly, his rendering of Doctor Gachet’s Garden is far messier than Daubigny’s Garden seven weeks later; it is as if Van Gogh is making an extra effort to impress his fellow artist Charles-François Daubigny. He painted the latter scene twice: the first includes a clunky depiction of a cat (one presumes it is a cat) in the foreground; the second, however, which Van Gogh called “one of my most deliberate canvases,” paints over the offending animal (just about discernible) and is a controlled and calm masterpiece. It is extraordinary to consider that the creator of such a wonderful piece of art committed suicide just three days after its completion.

It is no surprise that the floral section impresses, too. But what is surprising is that those works on display from Auvers-sur-Oise are the first floral canvases he painted (barring a single exception) since his sunflowers in Arles eighteen months earlier. The petals of flowers were a particular gift to Van Gogh, who almost recreates rather than paints them with his thick slabs of oil, as demonstrated in Glass with Carnations, from a private collection. Arguably less successful here are his faces, despite his perhaps misguided belief that he was more passionate about portraits than any other painter. The second of his Two Girls paintings is frankly a little disturbing, the spooky young children looking more like something from Children of the Damned than delightful rustic offspring. (The first version, from a private collection, is considerably superior.) Doctor Paul Gachet is far more effective: a mutual understanding between sitter and painter of their shared depressive nature is made clear. The first of Van Gogh’s three portraits of Adeline Ravoux, completed over three successive days, is the other highlight of this section of the show. It would be wholly unjust to deem the portraits ineffective; it is simply that they compare less favorably with the brilliance of the other works on display.

Nowhere is this brilliance clearer than in the landscapes. Here we encounter Van Gogh experimenting with his new approach of double-square works, canvases with widths twice as long as the height. These canvases naturally work well for the horizons, be they low or high, of his landscapes. Although these are among his finest works, his very last painting, Tree Roots, while adhering to this format, must be deemed a failure. Within a few hours of its completion on July 27, Van Gogh had shot himself in the chest. It is impossible not to speculate that this rather messy final work pushed him over the edge, regardless of the four or five masterpieces produced in the previous two and a half weeks alone. Perhaps the tangled confusion represented his state of mind. Sensibly, the exhibition does not end with this final work. Instead, visitors leave the exhibition by way of one last wall displaying three paintings of stupendous beauty, engagement, and accomplishment: Landscape at Twilight, Wheatfield with Crows, and Wheatfield under Thunderclouds. All fittingly capture the ominous, dark dives into melancholy of the artist in his final days and affirm his greatness to the very end.

Curated by Nienke Bakker and Emmanuel Coquery, this is an important, major exhibition that allows for a fuller appreciation of Van Gogh beyond his more famous Provençal years. Alas, the problem with such blockbuster shows—as Benjamin Riley admirably addressed in his review of last year’s Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (“Dutch treats” in The New Criterion of June 2023)—is the occluding crowds that are drawn to them. This Van Gogh exhibition was even more rammed than the sold-out Vermeer show. Nonetheless, here is a truly spectacular event.