Wheat Field with Sheaves

In June 1888 the wheat around Arles came ripe, and Van Gogh threw himself at the harvest. In little more than a week he made around ten paintings and several drawings of it, working outdoors in the heat to be among the same fields and the same labour he admired. This is one of them, bound sheaves stacked in the foreground, the cut field running back in flat bands to a line of trees and rooftops. There is no drama in it, no storm and no symbol, just the plain business of a field being brought in under a hot sky. He was painting fast because the harvest itself would not wait.