Wheat Field with Cypresses

Across the bottom of the painting, the wheat bends in short yellow strokes. The dark cypresses rise on the right, while pale clouds curl through a broad blue sky. Let your eyes move between those three areas. Vincent van Gogh gives each part of the landscape its own direction and pace. The paint is thick enough for individual strokes to have raised edges. Small red flowers interrupt the yellow and green near the bottom. Van Gogh painted Wheat Field with Cypresses outdoors at Saint-Rémy in 1889. His interest in the trees intensified that June. Follow the blue ridge behind the field, then the curling clouds above it. Their shapes repeat without becoming identical. In July he included the composition in drawings sent to his brother. He later returned to it in the studio, making variants that include a full-size painting now in London. The Met canvas records his work in front of the landscape before those later repetitions.