About this work
The eye lands immediately on the sky — a wide, luminous band of yellows and oranges burning across the canvas as the day's last light dissolves. Van Gogh himself described it as "an evening effect: two pear trees entirely black against the yellowing sky, with wheatfields and the château enclosed by dark foliage against the purple background."
He made this evening landscape in the fields near Auvers, with a view of the local castle, rendering the tangled black branches of the pear trees with a flurry of black brushstrokes.
This reinforces the contrast between the dark trees and the luminous yellow sky, while the painting's wide format gives it something of a panoramic sweep.
In the foreground, a dirt path curves through a grassy field, rendered with thick, impasto strokes of green and brown — leading back to the château, inviting the viewer deep into the scene.
The twilight is conveyed by heavy strokes of orange and yellow, but the sun itself is not seen.
The painting was created in June 1890 in Auvers, France , during the final and most astonishing chapter of Van Gogh's life. *Landscape at Twilight* is a view of the château at Auvers and was the first of the double-square canvases, described by Van Gogh in a letter to Theo dated 24 June.
These canvases were 50 cm high and a metre wide — an entirely new format he had not previously used.
It was the only view he made of the château. The Auvers period was one of extraordinary creative urgency: during the months of May, June, and July 1890, Van Gogh was extremely productive, with letters giving accounts of thirty-six paintings that can be dated with certainty to the period. Having recently left the asylum at Saint-Rémy, he arrived in Auvers to find it "sunny and covered with flowers" and "beautiful greenery in abundance," which inspired him to paint colourful gardens, vineyards, and landscapes. *Landscape at Twilight* stands as a direct record of that charged, urgent vision.
On a wall, this painting commands stillness. Its wide horizontal format suits a long wall — above a console in a hallway, over a low credenza in a living room, or anchoring a dining space where it can be seen across a distance. The deep blacks and smouldering yellows shift beautifully under warm evening light, growing more alive as the day fades, almost mirroring the scene itself. It speaks to viewers drawn to nature as emotional experience
