October

Burning the stubble was ordinary autumn work on French farms. Once the grain was in, the straw and weeds left standing on the field were set alight. The Rijksmuseum describes this canvas as exactly that day, fields with the fires burning across them and, at the left, oxen beside a tipping cart. Daubigny left it undated, so the catalogue can only place it somewhere between 1850 and 1878, which covers most of his working life. He painted it wide, about 1.6 metres across and 88 centimetres high, a panoramic shape he used often for flat country. The picture belongs to the Rijksmuseum and hangs on loan in the Van Gogh Museum. In May 1890 Van Gogh settled at Auvers-sur-Oise, the village where Daubigny had lived, and in his last weeks he painted Daubigny's garden three times.