Tree Roots

An unfinished work from July 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise. It's in the long, double-square canvas style Van Gogh used in his later landscapes; roots buried in the ground and severed trunks fill the frame from end to end, the sky is completely obscured. In 2020, thanks to an old postcard, the roadside location where the painting was made in Auvers was identified.

Tree Roots is an oil painting made by Vincent van Gogh in July 1890, during his time living in the town of Auvers-sur-Oise in France. Van Gogh spent the final months of his life in this small town after leaving the psychiatric asylum at Saint-Rémy in May 1890. The work is one of the double-square format canvases he used in his last landscapes, and is most likely the final painting he completed before his death in July 1890. Jan Hulsker regards this painting as the most original among Van Gogh's double-square canvases. Although viewers can discern tree roots and trunks in the composition, they struggle to define the subject of the whole. Van der Veen and Knapp note that, as in Undergrowth with Two Figures, the painting itself takes precedence over its subject in this work, pointing toward abstract art and German Expressionism. Van Gogh had made a study of tree roots in The Hague in 1882, completing it around the same time as a large work titled Sorrow (now lost). In a letter to his brother Theo, he stated that he wanted to express something of the struggle for life in these drawings.