May-June 1890

Vincent works on views of the village and surrounding landscape. In June he writes, “What l’m most passionate about, much much more than all the rest in my profession—is the portrait, the modern portrait.” At Vincent’s request, Theo sends Bargue’s Exercices au fusain so he can copy the 60 sheets of nude figures as he did when he was first teaching himself to draw. “If I neglected to keep on studying proportions and the nude I’d find myself in a bad position later on.”

In the nine weeks he spends in Auvers, he finishes more than 100 works (30 drawings and more than 70 paintings). “Lately I’ve been working a lot and quickly; by doing so I’m trying to express the desperately swift passage of things in modern life.“

– Alisia Robin Coon, Van Gogh Timeline, in Becoming van Gogh, Denver Art Museum, 2012, 266