Wheatfield under Thunderclouds

Van Gogh painted this in early July 1890 at Auvers-sur-Oise, the village north of Paris where he spent the last two months of his life. He was working fast, sometimes a canvas a day, and he stretched several of these wheatfield views into a long double-square shape, twice as wide as it is tall, so the eye has to travel across the whole horizon. Green wheat runs to a low line, and above it a heavy blue sky hangs with a few thick clouds. In a letter to his brother Theo he called these fields an immense stretch under troubled skies, and said he had tried to paint sadness and extreme loneliness, but also what he found healthy and strengthening in the country. He shot himself later that month.