Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field

Witnessing Vincent van Gogh’s painterly technique firsthand, one senses how his vibrant color choices and activated brushstrokes transform the surface of the canvas into a cacophony of energy and palpable life force.

The son of a minister, van Gogh had considered the church as a profession. Religion and spirituality were a significant part of his life and he often chose subject matter depicting the natural world, or laborers who worked the land. Van Gogh viewed this type of work as authentic, and of the cycles of growth and the seasons of the year as symbolic of spirituality. Mostly self-taught as an artist, while living in Paris he was influenced by new styles including Impressionism, Neo Impressionism, and Symbolism, all of which challenged the long-standing traditions of realism and history painting. In February 1888, van Gogh traveled from Paris to Arles in the south of France, where he painted scenes of the railway, orchards, canals and wheat fields such as this one.

Wheat Field, in HoMA’s collection, is one of ten paintings and five drawings showing different phases of the harvest. Van Gogh completed the series in just over a week in June 1888. He drew and painted outdoors (en plein air) to experience the same environment as the field workers he admired and the intensity of the elements. The multidirectional brushstrokes and warm color draw our attention to the sheaves of harvested wheat. The yellow-orange tones are offset by the contrasting blue of the sky, and the tumultuous energy of the foreground contrasts the relative stability of the horizontal bands of fields progressing into the distance.

In a July 1888 letter to his art-dealer brother Theo, van Gogh wrote: “As for landscapes, I’m beginning to find that some, done more quickly than ever, are among the best things I do. It’s like that with the one of which I sent you the drawing, the harvest and the wheat stacks too…when I come back from a session like that I can assure you my brain is so tired that if that sort of work is repeated often — the way it’s been during this harvest — I become totally distracted and incapable of a whole lot of ordinary things.”

— Katherine Love, Assistant Curator Contemporary Art

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853 – 1890) Wheat Field, 1888
Oil on canvas Gift of Mrs. Richard A. Cooke and Family in memory of Richard A. Cooke, 1946 (377.1)