Sheaves of Wheat in a Field

In July and August of 1885 the wheat came in around Nuenen, and Van Gogh followed the whole harvest with his brushes, the reaping, the binding, the gleaning, the haymaking. For him this seasonal work of the fields was the real subject of modern painting, worth as much as any grand scene. Most of his harvest pictures line the sheaves up in rows, often with a figure bent over tying them. This one does something odder. A single bundle of sheaves stands alone in the middle of the mown field, with nobody around it. He painted the cut stubble in the foreground with thick, blunt strokes, then switched to a fine brush for the thin stalks of the standing bundle, so the sheaves themselves look almost combed. It is a small canvas, close in colour to the dark earth tones he was still working in, months before he left the Netherlands for good in late 1885.