Treading the paths

From Giverny, we drove to Auvers-Sur-Oise- a pilgrimage, you might say, to this hauntingly beautiful place where Vincent Van Gogh rests. It was here that, approximately on July 27th, 1890, Van Gogh tragically shot himself in the chest, passing away from his wounds two days later, July 29th.
We walked the very paths Vincent frequented, including the site of his final painting, Roots, created on the day of his death. This chaotic tangle of growth may have captured his own troubled mind - a vision of vitality struggling to find direction? Walking these paths, it struck me that his work often feels like a message that he was trying to leave behind, especially in Wheatfield with Crows, where paths fork in three directions. I couldn’t help but wonder: was he thinking of which path he would take?
The afternoon was deeply moving. Reading a letter from his dear friend Camille Bernard, who wrote to a fellow artist soon after Vincents death, brought me to tears. In that moment, Vincent Van Gogh’s story felt so real, no longer confined to a book or the internet.
The cemetery lies on a hill above the town, surrounded by farmland where tractors work the earth alongside its boundaries. Local families tend to their graves here. For a short time, we couldn’t spot Vincent and Theo Van Gogh’s graves, but then Mark spotted them - their simple headstones and the rest of the plot covered in Ivy. Dr Gachet, Vincent’s doctor and friend, had planted Ivy from his own garden, intending it to grow and cover the plot so that the brothers would forever be bound together. I felt deeply grateful to pay homage to such an inspiring artist. It is a day I will never forget.Leer más