
A field of ripe wheat fills the lower half, gold and ochre, laid on in short curling strokes that lean as if the wind were passing through. On the right two cypresses rise together, dark green and flame-shaped, taller than anything else in the view; a smaller one stands beside them. Olive bushes and low trees make a band of greens across the middle. Behind them the Alpilles run as a low line of blue and violet hills. Above, the sky is in motion: white and pale-blue clouds in thick swirls, with touches of mint green. A few red poppies show at the field's near edge.
Wheat Field with Cypresses
Vincent van Gogh, 1889
Oil on canvas, 73.2 × 93.4 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993.132
Painted outdoors near Saint-Rémy in the summer of 1889. This is the first version, made in front of the field; a husk of wheat is still caught in the paint. He worked from the far hills down to the near wheat, wet into wet, with no changes of mind. Later that year, in the studio, he painted it twice more.
Where the sky meets the cypress, cloud laid on in thick, curling strokes.