Auvers sur Oise: The Original Impressionist Landscape

by Lesley Stern

I had an uncanny sense of deja vu when I first laid eyes on Auvers sur Oise thus I could not figure out why it breathed familiarity.  I then realized I had been entranced before by much of the scenery, which hung on the walls of major museums and was printed in art history books.

Van Gogh spent his final 90 days, painted 70 canvases and died here in Auvers, however, I did not know that this is where Impressionism was born.

Certainly Impressionism's gestation period occurred in Paris, where artists like Manet, Pissarro, Monet, Renoir and Degas departed from the academic...