Racines (Tree Roots) by Van Gogh, and The Path to Van Gogh’s Final Painting

In Auvers-sur-Oise, a new trail now invites visitors to discover the story behind Van Gogh’s painting Racines (Tree Roots) by following the Sentier du dernier tableau (The Path to Van Gogh’s Final Painting). This experience fully immerses you in precise spots that inspired the painter, the way marked by 12 boards including QR codes enabling you to access related recordings.

Across the month of July 1890, setting out from the Auberge Ravoux, now the Maison Van Gogh, the artist repeatedly climbed to this plateau, where he would execute a dozen canvases. On 27th July 1890, he produced his very final painting, Racines (Tree Roots), here, a piece now displayed at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. At the end of that same day, he went back up to the plateau one final time, intending to put an end to his life in a wheatfield. He would die on 29 July.

Van Gogh can’t simply be summed up by his 878 canvases, as his life story resonates so strongly through time, with his remarkable hopes, anguish and energy. He only began painting at the age of 28; by 37 years of age, he had produced a massive body of work that would change the course of art history. His personal story would come to an end in this place, where he both executed his final painting and took the steps towards his ultimate destiny, on his last walk up into the wheatfields, literally taking his final path in life here.

The path that leads to the spot where Van Gogh painted Racines (Tree Roots) was simply a farm track at the time, allowing agricultural workers to reach the cultivated fields, but it has become, thanks to Van Gogh’s presence in these parts, a site filled with significance, a truly historic way.

The trail, with its dozen stages, encourages visitors to grasp Van Gogh’s conception of art, his vision of the power and intensity of nature, and how he created his very final painting. This path takes you as close as it’s possible to get to the canvas, allowing you to go right up to the tree roots Van Gogh depicted. These roots are still alive today, still bearing witness to what he painted that fateful day. At the end of the trail, there’s a further canvas you’re invited to study up close, Champ de blé aux corbeaux (Wheatfield with Crows), such a striking landscape painting that brilliantly distills the emotional intensity of Van Gogh’s very final flurry of work.

Recognising the universal nature of Van Gogh’s art, each of this path’s associated recordings is available in a range of languages, thus providing countless visitors with the clearest understanding possible of this chapter in the history of art, to be shared by us all. Walking along the trail at your own pace, immerse yourself in the descriptive texts as you’re led, without fuss, to the site of Van Gogh final artistic outpourings.