A Wheatfield, with Cypresses

Van Gogh painted this in September 1889 from inside the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole at Saint-Rémy, where he had admitted himself after the breakdown in Arles. Through that summer the cypresses had taken hold of him. He told his brother Theo they were beautiful in line and proportion, like an Egyptian obelisk, and that no one had yet painted them as he saw them. This is the finished studio version, worked up from a study he had made outdoors in June. The whole Provençal landscape is here — the golden wheat, the dark flame of the cypress, the blue wall of the Alpilles behind — everything set moving in the same swirling, rhythmic strokes.