The site where Vincent van Gogh painted his last picture has been located, looking pretty much as it did 130 years ago last week, according to researchers at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
The scene, a painting of tree roots along a road in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, was painted two days before Van Gogh’s death. The identification started with a vintage postcard, showing the scene in 1910, twenty years later. The card was found online by Wouter van Veen, artistic director of the Van Gogh Institute, who recognized the distinctive pattern of twisted roots.
The painting is superimposed on the card in the image above.
Bert Maes, a woodland historian who also studied the two images as well as the woodland and agreed with the identification: “Although the scene on the postcard is around 20 years later, you can see very clearly in Tree Roots the same configuration of coppice wood on a steep chalk verge… The nice thing is that there is even a stump left that is still recognisable after 130 years.’
