Bäuerin vor einem Weizenfeld

Van Gogh painted this in the early summer of 1890 at Auvers, the village north of Paris where he spent his last weeks. In June he wrote that he felt completely calm and in a normal state, and pictures like this show it, a young peasant woman set close against a field of ripe wheat, painted with real tenderness. It looks back to the heavy peasant subjects he had made years earlier in the Netherlands, but the colour is entirely new. The poppies behind her are reduced to glowing red dots that echo the flush of her cheeks, and her yellow straw hat burns against the blue of her dress. Within weeks his mood collapsed after news that his brother's family had fallen ill, and by the end of July he was dead. He was 37.