The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise was painted in June 1890, during Van Gogh’s final weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise. It is one of the major works from his last period, when he produced an extraordinary body of paintings in just over two months.

The painting is significant because Van Gogh does not show the church as calm, solid, or purely sacred. Under his brush, the 13th-century Gothic building becomes unstable and almost alive, rising in deep blue and violet while the paths around it seem to pull away from the ground. Musée d’Orsay describes it as a monument “on the verge of dislocating itself,” which is exactly what gives the work its strange power.