Gogh, Vincent van.
Oil on canvas. 59x72.5 cm
France. June, 1890
Source of Entry: formerly in the collection of Otto Krebs, Holzdorf.
Transferred from Germany after World War II
Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia


In May 1890, Vincent van Gogh came to Auvers-sur-Oise and painted a series of pictures with houses. The Auvers period began with the hope of a new life and the recovery of health. This sense of hope was expressed in the pictures executed in May. In the June paintings, the motif of the home remained at the centre of the artist's attention, but its emotional range expanded greatly - from gloomy foreboding to conciliation. Since the emotion was expressed by the artist not through the subject itself, but through his manipulation of the methods of painting, the structure of his compositions changed each time. In the present picture a frozen quality prevails, and the chief lines are stable horizontals and verticals. They are needed to draw a house, but they can turn it into a prison. The artist gives much attention to windows, the "eyes" of a home. The red splashes of the windows to the right are alarming; Van Gogh would draw a star, a sign of fate, at moments of greatest anguish. The White House at Night expresses the great psychological tension under which Van Gogh found himself.

고흐는 집의 눈일수 있는 창문에 많은 촛점을 두었다. 창문에 비춘 빨간색들과 함께 큰 고통의 순간에 고흐는 운명의 상징인 하나의 별을 그려내었을 것이다. '밤의 하얀집'은 고흐의 커다란 심리적 긴장을 표현한다.

러시아, 세인트 피터스버그 헤리티지 박물관