Ears of Wheat

In June 1890, in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise north of Paris, Vincent van Gogh did something he had wanted to try for years. He set his canvas down inside a wheatfield and painted only the stalks, letting them fill the whole surface. There is no horizon here, no sky, no path out of the field. He had been looking hard at Japanese prints, which often crop nature this close, and that summer he wrote of wanting to catch the soft rustle of the ears moving in the wind. It was among the last things he made. Within weeks he would be dead. He still found room for two small flowers: a blue cornflower at the upper left, and a pink bindweed low on the right.