Green Wheat Fields, Auvers

In May 1890 Vincent van Gogh left the asylum at Saint-Remy in the south and came north to Auvers-sur-Oise, a village near Paris, to be close to his brother Theo and under the eye of Dr Gachet. He had about 70 days left. He worked at a furious pace, turning out a painting almost every day, and this field of young green wheat is one of them. There is no drama in the subject, just wind moving through unripe grain under a broad sky, but the paint is laid on in restless, driving strokes that never settle. He made it in the early summer of 1890. By the end of July he was dead, at 37, and the Auvers fields were among the last things he painted.