In May 1890 Van Gogh left southern France to live in Auvers, a small town just north of Paris, where he rented a room at the inn of Arthur Ravoux. A month after his arrival he painted three portraits of Ravoux's sixteen-year-old daughter, Adeline. Although known for his landscapes, 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.<sup id="cite_ref-1" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a></sup>
<bdi><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Vincent_van_Gogh" class="extiw" title="w:en:Vincent van Gogh"><span title="Dutch painter (1853-1890)">Vincent van Gogh</span></a>
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