Arles: View from the Wheat Fields

In June 1888 Van Gogh had been in Arles, in the south of France, for a few months, and the wheat around the town was being cut. He worked straight through the harvest, and wrote to his brother Theo that he'd spent a week in the fields, silent under the blazing sun like the reapers themselves, wanting to get the yellow down quickly, quickly, quickly before it was gone. This is the one wheatfield from that run he turned on its side, taller than it is wide, so the town of Arles sits low on the horizon behind the stacked sheaves. He painted several of these gold fields in a matter of days, racing the end of the season.