Wheatfield with Crows
Vincent van Gogh (1853 to 1890) · July 1890
A wide field of ripe wheat under a stormy blue sky, with three paths running into it and a flock of black crows scattering over the corn. The canvas is twice as wide as it is high, a format Vincent used for a series of landscapes in his last weeks at Auvers-sur-Oise in July 1890. He wrote that these wide fields under troubled skies were meant to express sadness and extreme loneliness, but also that he believed they showed what he found healthy and fortifying about the countryside.
Look at the strokes. The wheat is painted in short slashes of yellow and orange that lean in different directions, so the whole field seems to move in the wind. The sky is two blues, a deep ultramarine at the top and a lighter cobalt with white below, laid on in thick, restless strokes. The crows are the simplest marks in the picture, a few black ticks and hooks, but they are placed so that they seem to fly out of the field and toward you. The three paths lead nowhere in particular, the middle one stopping short in the corn, which is part of why the picture feels unresolved.
Because Vincent died at the end of July 1890 this painting has often been called his last, and the film Lust for Life showed him painting it moments before his suicide. That is a legend; he painted several pictures after it, including some very calm ones. The museum shows it near its companions from the same weeks, so you can see it as part of a series rather than a farewell note. Still, standing in front of it, the drama of the sky and the sudden movement of the birds are hard to shake off.
Did You Know? The wide double square format of these Auvers landscapes was a deliberate experiment; Vincent ordered the canvases specially and painted a dozen of them in a few weeks.
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