Enclosed Wheat Field with Rising Sun

In 1889 Van Gogh had checked himself into the asylum at Saint-Rémy, in Provence, after the breakdown that cost him part of his ear. From his room he could see a small wheat field enclosed by a stone wall, and that walled field became one of his steadiest subjects that year. He painted it in different weather and different light, watching it change through the seasons he spent shut in. Here he catches it at dawn, the sun climbing over the wall while the young wheat runs in thick, curling strokes across the ground. He saw the field through the iron bars of his window, and he returned to it again and again from that one fixed spot.