Van Gogh painted this rolling wheat field and its dark, flame-shaped cypress trees while he was a patient at an asylum, not in some idyllic studio. The turbulence in the brushwork is real weather, but it's also a real state of mind.
What you're looking at
This is a view of the countryside near Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, painted in the summer of 1889. Wind moves through the wheat in short, curling strokes, and the cypress trees on the left rise like dark green flames against a sky full of rolling clouds. Van Gogh painted cypresses often in this period, drawn to how their shape cut straight up against the horizontal landscape.
Painted from inside the asylum, the same summer as The Bedroom
Van Gogh made this painting during his year-long stay at the Saint-Rémy asylum, where he had voluntarily admitted himself after a mental health crisis in Arles. It comes from the very same summer he repainted his bedroom scene for a second time. And like The Bedroom, this composition exists in three separate versions that Van Gogh painted close together — this particular one is the version now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Painting the same view or subject more than once wasn't unusual for him. It let him work through a composition again, adjusting color and rhythm each time, even while confined to the asylum grounds and its walled garden.
One detail to look for
Follow the wheat from the bottom of the canvas up toward the cypresses. The brushstrokes shift from short, choppy dashes in the field to longer, twisting strokes in the trees and sky — Van Gogh using brushwork itself to show the difference between grounded wheat and restless air.
See it at its real size
Our canvas print is labeled against the true size of the original, 73 x 93.4 cm, so what you're hanging is honestly scaled, not a guess. Shop the canvas print.