It all starts with one sentence: " One day or another I think I'll find a way to do an exhibition of my own in a café."
It is this hope, written in a letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo, that has driven Dominique-Charles Janssens, a huge fan of the artist, for almost 40 years to try to realize the painter's dream, which eventually became his own. Since his accident in 1985 in front of the Maison Van Gogh, which changed the course of his life, Dominique-Charles, President of the Institut Van Gogh, has never stopped striving to preserve the painter's memory in the town of Auvers-sur-Oise.
After buying the Auberge Ravoux, with its restaurant on the first floor and the rooms where the painter stayed for a few francs upstairs, it was necessary to renovate this piece of history over several years, restoring it to its former charm and making it accessible to the public, starting in 1993. But instead of turning it into a busy museum, the Belgian decided that Van Gogh's famous room, which was never re-let after his suicide, should be as empty as possible, to leave visitors free to feel the painter's soul without any distractions.
So, in this small 7m2 space, there's just a chair and a glass wall, ready to house a work created by the painter in Auvers-sur-Oise. The town is just waiting for one of these paintings to come home, and it's well on the way, with a major painting still under wraps, bucolic as can be, but we'll have to be patient, after several last-minute aborted attempts by different painting owners. The Maison Van Gogh would thus become the world's smallest museum, with its only painting in view, safely guarded...
Location
Auberge Ravoux
52 Rue du Général de Gaulle
95430 Auvers sur Oise
