Van Gogh · New presentation of the artist's works at the Musée d'Orsay

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), born in the Netherlands, was 33 when he arrived in Paris in 1886. His style changed as he came into contact with impressionist painting and the young

artists he met, including Paul Signac and Émile Bernard, who were seeking to invent an art in which colour and simplicity of drawing took precedence.

In 1888, tired of the hustle and bustle of Paris, he settled in sunny Arles. He intended to found a colony of artists. Despite the graphic and luminous power of his paintings, his project was a failure that plunged him into disarray. He mutilated his ear and was committed in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, where he continued to paint despite his episodes.

At the end of May 1890, he made a fresh start in Auvers-sur-Oise, an artists’ village near Paris. He worked intensely, but soon lost all illusions of recovery and artistic recognition.

On 27 July, he took his own life by shooting himself in the chest.

Playing with variations of brushstrokes and harmonies of colour, Van Gogh compared his art to music, a “consoling art” and the expression of a personal vision.

When Van Gogh decided to leave the hospital in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, convinced that he had caught “a southern disease”, he expressed a wish to be taken in by the Impressionist

painter Camille Pissarro. Pissarro refused, but suggested that he go to Auvers-sur-Oise, a village frequented by artists where the doctor Paul Gachet (1828-1909) practised.

A doctor specialising in “melancholy” and nervous illnesses, Gachet monitored Van Gogh’s state of health. An amateur painter and engraver himself, under the pseudonym of Paul Van Ryssel, he was close to the Impressionists, from whom he bought several paintings, notably by Cézanne, Guillaumin, Monet and Renoir. Gachet was one of the first art lovers to collect works by Van Gogh. He posed for the painter, who gave him a number of works, and he obtained others from Theo van Gogh after his death. He owned up to twenty-seven

paintings, twenty drawings and three prints by the artist.

Heirs to their father’s collection, Marguerite Gachet (1869-1949) and Paul Gachet junior (1873-1962) donated it to the Musée du Louvre between 1949 and 1954, where it remained until the opening of the Musée d’Orsay.