Weizenfeld

Van Gogh made this during a single sweltering stretch of June 1888, soon after moving south to Arles for the strong light he was sure would remake his painting. The harvest was on, and he threw himself at it, turning out about ten canvases in roughly a week. I have had a week of concentrated hard work in the wheatfields right out in the sun, he told his brother Theo. You can feel that speed here. The horizon sits high, so the ripe field fills nearly the whole panel, and he sets the flat gold of the wheat against a jumble of quick, many-coloured strokes along the foreground.