The image above is of a painting called Tree Roots. Vincent van Gogh was working on it on July 27, 1890. That evening he shot himself in the chest, and he died the next day. The exact location of the real-life tree roots has recently been discovered, about 150 metres from where van Gogh was staying. The discovery came from examining an old postcard.
The scene in Tree Roots, a painting of trunks and roots growing on a hillside near the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, was first spotted on a card dating from 1900 to 1910 by Wouter van der Veen, the scientific director of the Institut Van Gogh.
Following a comparative study of the painting, the postcard and the current condition of the hillside, researchers at the Van Gogh Museum and Bert Maes, a dendrologist specialising in historical vegetation, concluded that it was “highly plausible” that the place where Van Gogh made his final brushstrokes had been unearthed.
Although it no longer looks the same, the site was located, and a wooden fence was erected around it Tuesday for protection. Read more about the tree roots that inspired van Gogh at the Guardian. -via Damn Interesting
