In Vincent Van Gough's Houses at Auvers, the artist walks the fine line between abstract and representational art. This piece is considered an impressionist piece because it was painted directly from a subject. Some other things that make this piece impressionist are the brush strokes. You can see the brush strokes and the actual texture that Van Gogh was implying. The painting is a landscape piece and is an oil painting on canvas. It is a picture of houses and a road surrounded by trees and people.
The frame of this painting is a very intricate gold leaf frame. It is in the Foster Gallery section of the museum. This piece stands a little more than two feet tall and is almost exactly two feet wide (29 ¾- x 24 3/8-). It immediately struck my attention with its brilliant colors and bold brush strokes. To me this painting stand out far more than any around it. I believe that Van Gogh selected the perfect format for this piece. If it were any larger it would have not been so easy to imply the texture that he did with his brush strokes. If he made it any smaller he would have taken away from the viewing experience by cluttering everything in the picture too close together. The light in this wing of the museum did not seem to do the piece justice. It could have been a little brighter to make the colors of the painting stand out a little more. Other than that the viewing of this painting was incredible and as soon as I saw it I knew that I had to write about it.
Van Gogh, who was born on March 30, 1853, was born in the Netherlands and was generally thought to be the most influential painter of Dutch descent since Rembrandt. Van Gogh suffered from a severe mental illness that cut his life and his artistic prime violently short. Before his life ended with a suicide, Van Gogh only spent about ten years of his life involved with art and still managed to become one of the most famous post-impressionist (expressionism) painters in history.