Van Gogh "The Cottage in Auvers"

Crows over the Wheat Field, 50.5x100.5 cm, 1890. Collection of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands. When Van Gogh arrived in Auvers in May 1890, he was captivated by the superb rural scenery and, moved, quickly began painting this "Cottage in Auvers." Among all his landscape paintings, this is the most somber, seemingly a work created shortly before his suicide (like "Crows over the Wheat Field"). This cottage seems on the verge of being crushed by an approaching storm; there is a pre-storm silence, unusually still, with the dark green rough lines of the roof blending into the lush trees leaping like torches. Van Gogh believed that "painting is a representation of one's inner world." Does this work also hint at the storm (inner struggle) Van Gogh was about to face, nearing the brink of life and death? Indeed, days later, Van Gogh took his own life, leaving behind art that is compassionate and deeply moving for humanity.