1888-1890 · multiple · Knot of Motif

The Wheat Fields

He said he wanted to paint consolation, but what he painted was wind.

F411 Harvest at La Crau 1888
F719 Wheat Field with Reaper 1889
F779 Wheat Field with Crows 1890

Synaesthetic Precision

"The reaper is the image of death." It is his sharpest synaesthetic proposition. A peasant's working posture translated into an abstract claim. But he did not paint a skull or a scythe — he painted an ordinary man bending under midday sun. The word image is the key — not a metaphor, not a symbol; the physical structure of the figure and the physical structure of "death" are the same shape. Synaesthetic precision at its deepest: an action that is simultaneously labour, ending, and rhythm.

The Colour Experimenter

The colour evolves through the three years. 1888: pure yellow, pure blue, complementary pairs at high saturation — the harvest field, confident. 1889: the colours begin to interweave — yellow-green rolling, blue-green pressing into the wheat, the dark green of cypresses leaning in. 1890: violet pressed onto gold from above, the black crows cutting horizontally across the top — the first time direction of weight enters the colour. Same motif, three palettes, played as a three-act drama by the colour experimenter — the colour itself doing the narrating.

Painting

A motif spanning three years. 1888 Arles: Harvest at La Crau — golden, flat, the rows of wheat orderly, blue mountains on the horizon. 1889 Saint-Rémy: Wheat Field with Cypresses, Wheat Field with Reaper — the same ears swaying just outside the asylum's wall, the colour now turning blue-green and rolling. 1890 Auvers: Wheat Field with Crows — a double-wide canvas, black crows, a violet sky, three small paths splitting and going nowhere. One crop, three densities of light.

Letter

1888 Arles: "I have a new drawing of a wheat field, a very broad, very simple landscape." 1889 Saint-Rémy: "I see in this reaper — a vague figure fighting like a devil in the midst of the heat to get to the end of his task — I see in it the image of death." 1890 Auvers, near the end: "They are vast stretches of wheat under troubled skies, and I did not need to go out of my way to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness." Three sentences across three years; the meaning of the wheat field sinks centimetre by centimetre.

Place

Three places. La Crau, the rolling country southeast of Arles, June 1888, midday — he sat under an olive tree at the edge of the field for two hours to make one painting. The wheat outside the wall of the asylum at Saint-Rémy, summer 1889 — he could see it from his second-floor window, and the wall in the painting is the same wall he saw daily from the inside. The wheat fields of Auvers, July 1890, the last two weeks. Connected, the three places trace an arc heading north, upward, toward the end.

Synaesthetic Precision

The Colour Experimenter

before

Wheat fields had been in his pictures since the Nuenen years, bound up with the sower and the labourers. By Saint-Rémy and Auvers, their meaning had changed.

now

In Auvers he wrote, facing the great wheat fields, that these vast plains gave him a kind of consolation; but the fields he painted afterward held more and more of wind and dark cloud — not consolation, but a force in continual motion.

after

For the last wheat fields of Auvers he wrote no explanation. They simply stand there.

Events

1888-06 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 629
Southeast of Arles, the rolling country of La Crau. June 1888, midday — he sat under an olive tree at the edge of the field for two hours to make Harvest at La Crau
1888-07 The Colour Experimenter · Letter 629
'I have a new drawing of a wheat field — a very broad, very simple landscape.' Gold, level, the rows orderly
1889-06 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 784
Saint-Rémy: from the second-floor window he could see the wheat outside the wall. Completed Wheat Field with Cypresses — the same ears now turning blue-green and rolling
1889-09 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 800
'I see in this reaper — a vague figure fighting like a devil in the midst of the heat to get to the end of his task — I see in it the image of death.'
1889-10 The Translator · Letter 800
Completed Wheat Field with Reaper — a peasant's working posture translated into 'the image of death.' He did not paint a skull or a scythe; he painted an ordinary man bending under midday sun
1890-07 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 898
Auvers, the last weeks — painted Wheat Field with Crows (double-wide): black crows, violet sky, three small paths splitting and going nowhere
1890-07 Synaesthetic Precision · Letter 898
'They are vast stretches of wheat under troubled skies, and I did not need to go out of my way to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness.' The three-year arc closes here

From the Letters

J'ai un nouveau dessin d'un champ de blé, un paysage très large, très simple.

I have a new drawing of a wheat field, a very broad, very simple landscape.

Letter 629

Je vois dans ce faucheur — une vague figure qui lutte comme un diable en pleine chaleur pour venir à bout de sa besogne — je vois là-dedans l'image de la mort.

I see in this reaper — a vague figure fighting like a devil in the midst of the heat to get to the end of his task — I see in it the image of death.

Letter 800

Ce sont d'immenses étendues de blés sous des ciels troublés, et je ne me suis pas gêné pour chercher à exprimer de la tristesse, de la solitude extrême.

They are vast stretches of wheat under troubled skies, and I did not need to go out of my way to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness.

Letter 898

Letter Sources

Van Gogh letter records referenced on this page, linked to the Van Gogh Letters Project. vangoghletters.org

Technique Evidence

This work appears as evidence in this site’s technique-evolution axis.

The World in Motion 1889.05 – 1890.05 Open period F615 / JH1755 Wheatfield with Cypresses Impasto Visible impasto and thick brushwork Brushstroke Representative of swirling brushwork
The Burning Seventy Days 1890.05 – 1890.07 Open period F779 / JH2117 Wheatfield with Crows Speed Representative work from the 70-day Auvers burst