Wheatfield with a Reaper, second painting

Vincent van Gogh made this glowing wheatfield in 1889 while living at the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy, where he had gone to recover after a breakdown. The view came straight from his barred window, looking out over the fields beyond the asylum walls. He returned to this subject many times, drawn to the sea of yellow crop, the blue hills rolling along the horizon, and the pale sun sitting low in a green sky. A single reaper bends to his work in the middle of it all, small against the huge stretch of grain.

That tiny figure carried a big meaning for the artist. In a letter to his brother Theo, Van Gogh compared the reaper to death itself, with people being the wheat that eventually gets cut down. Strangely though, he did not see it as a gloomy idea. He described the moment as happening in bright daylight, bathed in golden light, almost peaceful. His thick, swirling brushstrokes give the field a restless energy, as if the whole crop is bending and turning in a summer breeze. A calm painting on the surface, with a quiet reflection on life and death hiding just underneath.