The Wheat Field

The Wheat Field is a series of oil paintings executed by Vincent van Gogh in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. All of them depict the view Van Gogh had from the window of his bedroom on the top floor of the asylum: a field enclosed by stone walls just beneath his window and excluded from normal life by the rear wall of the asylum grounds; beyond this enclosure farm land, accompanied by olive groves and vineyards, ran up to the hills at the foot of the mountain range called Les Alpilles.

From May 1889 to May 1890, Van Gogh recorded this view in changing settings: after a storm, with a reaper in the field, with fresh wheat raising in autumn and with flowers in the spring. This is one of Van Gogh's major series from Saint-Rémy, comprising works such as the Wheat Field at Sunrise in the Kröller-Müller Museum. Van Gogh included the Enclosed Field with Rising Sun (F737) made in December 1889 in his Display at Les XX 1890 in Brussels.

Van Gogh worked on a group of paintings "The Wheat Field" that he could see from his cell at Saint-Paul Hospital. From the studio room he could see a field of wheat, enclosed by a wall. Beyond that were the mountains from Arles. During his stay at the asylum he made about twelve paintings of the view of the enclosed wheat field and distant mountains.^[1] In May Van Gogh wrote to Theo, "Through the iron-barred window I see a square field of wheat in an enclosure, a perspective like Van Goyen, above which I see the morning sun rising in all its glory."^[2] The stone wall, like a picture frame, helped to display the changing colors of the wheat field.^[3]