Sheaves of Wheat

Van Gogh painted this in the last weeks of his life, in the summer of 1890, in the village of Auvers-sur-Oise just north of Paris. In June his brother Theo had sent a large batch of canvas, and Vincent worked at a furious pace, around 13 big pictures in a wide double-square format, several of them following the local wheat harvest through July. Here the cut sheaves fill almost the entire frame, gold on gold, with no horizon to escape to. The harvest around Auvers came in late July. On the 29th of that month, in the fields nearby, van Gogh shot himself, and he died two days later. This canvas belongs to that final run of work.