Landscape at Auvers in the Rain

I bought Siân a third dinosaur for her collection at the museum today. We'd originally gone to see Monet (the water lilies! The water lilies!). I might have left the room without seeing him, but Siân nudged me over to a small corner and there he was: Vincent and 'Landscape at Auvers in the Rain'.
I genuinely teared up a little.
I wonder if these were the same fields he shot himself in weeks later. The sign explaining the piece says that the crows are omens of death. I see what they mean - the crows are the focal point, they occupy the entire piece. van Gogh said that the countryside calmed him. But the crows are still there. It's like they obscure everything else.
It's probably a cliché to say that he's one of my favourite artists. You're not supposed to take artists', writers', or musicians' personal lives into account when you analyse their work. You can't do that to van Gogh, though. His work is fueled by feeling. The man precedes the paintings.
Maybe that's not what he would have wanted. But for a man who seemed so lonely, knowing that there are people who value not just his work, but him, just him, might scare the crows away for a little while.

To me, Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all. Certainly the most popular great painter of all time. The most beloved. His command of color, the most magnificent...
He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world. No one had ever done it before. Perhaps no one ever will again.
To my mind, that strange wild man who roamed the fields of Provence, was not only the world's greatest artist but also one of the greatest men who ever lived.
~ Vincent and the Doctor, 5.10, Doctor Who