June 1890. Van Gogh's greatest ambition was to paint portraits. "I should like to paint portraits," he wrote to his sister, "which a hundred years from now will seem to people of those days like apparitions. Thus I do not attempt to achieve this through photographic resemblance, but through our impassioned aspects, using our science and our modern taste for color as a means of expression and of exaltation of color." This painting presents Adeline Ravoux not as an individual, but as a symbol of the eternal woman, set against the infinite blue night like a radiant star (http://www.tfsimon.com/auvers-sur-oise.html) In May 1890, Van Gogh left the south and settled in Auvers, a small town north of Paris, where he rented a room at the inn of Arthur Ravoux. This portrait, completed during the last months of the artist’s life, depicts Ravoux’s 13-year-old daughter, Adeline. Van Gogh wrote that rather than photographic resemblance, he wanted his portraits to... (https://www.clevelandart.org/)