Wheatfield with a Reaper, second painting

Painted in 1889, this golden scene comes from one of the hardest periods of Vincent van Gogh's life. He created it while staying at the Saint-Paul asylum in Saint-Rémy, where he had checked himself in after a breakdown. From his barred window he could see the wheatfields beyond the walls, and he painted them again and again. A lone reaper works through the swirling crop here, small and bent to his task under a pale yellow sun that hangs in a soft green sky.

For Van Gogh, this reaper meant something deeper than just a farmer at work. In a letter to his brother Theo, he described the figure as an image of death, with humanity being the wheat that gets cut down. Yet he insisted there was nothing sad about it, calling the scene something that happens in broad daylight under a sun that floods everything with gold. You can feel his signature style in every brushstroke, those thick, rolling lines of paint that make the field look like it is rippling in the wind. It is a quiet picture with a heavy thought tucked inside it.