Auvers-sur-Oise was a small village near Paris where Vincent Van Gogh spent his last days from May 20th until July 29th 1890 after leaving the asylum of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in southern France. Van Gogh spent 70 days in Auvers painting frantically his last works (one painting daily) before committing suicide. Today, the village is a landmark for thousands of tourists eager to pay homage to the legendary painter who was buried in its cemetery with his brother Theo.
Auvers has been trying for ten years to fill the gap of notoriety with Giverny, the village of Impressionist painter Claude Monet and of the American museum dedicated to his U.S followers.The Ravoux inn, where Van Gogh rented a room, was sold in 1987 but no one in the village cared about its destiny except its new owner, Belgian Dominique-Charles Janssens who did much to set up an institute and a club of the Friends of Van Gogh's Home at the cost of a US $ 6,5 million investment. Now between 500 and 2,000 tourists queue up daily before the inn to visit the painter's tiny room and watch a video film for US $ 5,5 in an exchange for a souvenir catalogue.
The inn, restored in 1993, has kept the same stairs leading to the room where Van Gogh died. It is a very small place indeed, however quite empty but the owner plans to exhibit one of the works the Dutch master produced in Auvers.
Japanese tourists account for 35% of the visitors who pack in the village and are among those strange people who are sometimes seen dispersing the ashes of relatives over the tomb of the Van Gogh.
Such artists as Cézanne, Pissarro or Daubigny worked in Auvers during the last third of the 19th Century and tourists do not fail to pay also a visit to Daubigny's studio, many walls of which were painted by the artist himself or by his friend Camille Corot.
After failing to acquire the Ravoux inn, the General Council of the Val d'Oise region bought the house of Dr Gachet, Van Gogh's friend and patron, in 1995 and the Château of Auvers a year before.
In the Château, tourists are being offered a circuit called a «trip at the time of the Impressionists», a kind of multimedia show attracting over 100,000 people yearly that includes a 20 minute film aimed at deciphering some of Van Gogh's works.
Auvers, with its 6800 inhabitants, its small museum dedicated to absinth and its artistic community regrouping some 20 painters has never been as active as today thanks to the Van Gogh's international mania, an incredible omen for such village which had remained asleep for over 80 years, 20 kilometres north of Paris.
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