Wheat Stacks in Provence

The harvest around Arles began in the first days of June 1888 and Van Gogh followed it into the fields, working there until torrential rain about the 20th stopped the cutting and the painting alike. Out of those weeks came at least five drawings and ten canvases of wheat standing, cut and stacked. This one he painted around the 12th and 13th of June, outdoors under the full summer sun, and he told his brother Theo he had got it down in a single sitting and was as happy as a cricket doing it. Stacked wheat was an odd thing to build a landscape around in his day, and he set it right at the front of the picture.