Wheatfield with Crows

The story

Wheatfield with Crows was painted in July 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, the small village near Paris where Vincent van Gogh spent the last weeks of his life. Above the village stretch endless fields of ripe wheat. He went out into the fields with a long, narrow canvas, twice as wide as it is high, and painted the storm that was coming.

In Wheatfield with Crows the sky is dark blue, almost black, with two clouds that glow. The wheat is golden and sways in the wind. Three paths cross the field, one in the middle and two at the sides, and none of them leads anywhere; they all end in the wheat. Above the field fly black crows, painted with a few quick strokes, like letters.

For a long time people believed that Wheatfield with Crows was the last painting by Vincent van Gogh, a farewell message. That is not true: he painted more after it. But in a letter to Theo, Vincent van Gogh describes exactly such pictures: vast fields of wheat under troubled skies, in which he tried to express sadness and extreme loneliness. Straight afterwards he adds that he also wants to show what he considers healthy and strengthening in the countryside.

Auvers was the last stop on his road. There he painted The Church at Auvers under a deep blue sky and Portrait of Dr Gachet, the doctor who looked after him. Wheat had moved him since the south: a year earlier, in Saint-Rémy, he painted Wheat Field with Cypresses, where the field is calm and bright.

Wheatfield with Crows is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. On 27 July 1890 Vincent van Gogh shot himself in the same fields and died two days later. The painting remains one of the strongest he ever made: a land that shines, and a sky darkening above it.