In Houses at Auvers, how is the Auvers discussed?
Auvers-sur-Oise was a medieval town about 15 miles northwest of the centre of Paris. It was only a few roads wide, but extended for miles along the river in both directions, vineyards and market gardens scattered all along its length. Its hamlets were a mix of clusters of thatched houses and farm enclosures. The French painter Charles-François Daubigny first moored his studio barge Botin there in the 1850s, and later purchased no less than three houses in the village as well as another nearby. With the advent of a railway, the town became a tourist centre, its population swelling from 2,000 to 3,000 in the summer months. It attracted artists such as Corot, Cezanne and Pissarro, all seeking to capture its rustic charms. Dealers like Theo van Gogh sold thousands of their images.
Auvers had consequently become a prosperous community. It was a model of Third Republic idealism regarding the modernization of the peasants: Auvers farmers worked their own land. Tenant farmers were rare, and most landowners employed day labourers only in the harvest season. The property was parcelled and passed on through inheritance or through private sales ... Steady, landed and industrious, wearing both peasant denim and the latest city styles, the Auvers farmers were, to vary Eugen Weber's phrase, "peasants become Frenchmen," ... 
Van Gogh was alert to the change and the new modernity. Writing to Theo and Jo on 25 May, he remarked:Here we’re far enough from Paris for it to be the real countryside, but nevertheless, how changed since Daubigny. But not changed in an unpleasant way, there are many villas and various modern and middle-class dwellings, very jolly, sunny and covered with flowers. That is the almost lush countryside, just at this moment of the development of a new society in the old one, has nothing disagreeable about it; there’s a lot of well-being in the air. I see or think I see a calm there à la Puvis de Chavannes, no factories, but beautiful greenery in abundance and in good order.
Van Gogh made no paintings of traditional peasant life, la vie rustique, at Auvers of the sort he had formerly made in Nuenen. His sketchbooks contain perhaps just half a dozen or so quick studies of peasant scenes, such as F1615v Landscape with Peasant Women Harvesting (right), as well as a rather larger number of studies of farm animals such as chickens and ponies. His subjects were landscapes, townscapes, portraiture, and still lifes. His paintings at Auvers imply a range of social domains. Thus, his paintings of dwellings range from thatched cottages through to middle-class villas and finally aristocratic châteaus, and these are set within the social spaces of gardens, streets, and the vestiges of feudal domain respectively.During the months of May, June and July 1890, van Gogh was extremely productive. The letters give accounts of thirty-six paintings that can be dated with certainty to the Auvers period. The 1970 catalogue raisonné lists another fifty or so, of which some may date before Auvers and others may be inauthentic. Even certain paintings imply a painting executed every other day over the two-month period.The village captivated him. On his arrival on 20 May 1890, he wrote to his brother Theo and wife Jo Bonger that "Auvers is really beautiful – among other things many old thatched roofs, which are becoming rare." In his letter the following day he adds, "But I find the modern villas and the middle-class country houses almost as pretty as the old thatched cottages that are falling into ruin."Van Gogh lodged at the Auberge Ravoux, where he remained until his death in the early hours of the morning of 29 July 1890 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the stomach.
Cezanne Theo Auberge Ravoux Corot feudal domain Charles-François Daubigny Jo Bonger catalogue raisonné Eugen Weber Nuenen Pissarro Daubigny Paris Puvis de Chavannes Third Republic idealism Auvers-sur-Oise