photo #9284437

Vincent van Gogh "The Harvest" (The Crau Plain, near Arles, with Mont Majour in the background). - Arles 1888 - Oil on canvas - 73.0 cm × 92.0 cm - Van Gogh Museum - Amsterdam - Netherlands - Like other paintings by Van Gogh, this is a work painted outdoors: It is a luminous, Provençal landscape where Van Gogh skillfully manipulates perspective to lead the eye, across the wheat fields, to the distant mountains and the blue sky. The intense summer sun dominates the scene, catching glimpses of the ears of wheat, the fences, the cart, and the farms. The house located in the upper right intensely reflects the light, shining on its white facade. In this painting, you can almost feel the dryness and heat of the flat landscape around Arles in southern France. Van Gogh combined the azure blue of the sky with yellow and green tones so that the land captured the atmosphere of a summer day. He worked in the wheat fields for several days in a row under the scorching sun. This was an immensely productive period, during which he completed ten paintings and five drawings in just over a week, until a severe storm brought the harvest season to an end. Van Gogh wanted to depict peasant life and labor on the land, a recurring theme in his art, and painted various stages of the harvest. We see a half-mown wheat field, ladders, and several carts. A reaper at work is in the left background. Van Gogh considered it one of his most successful paintings, writing to his brother Theo that “the canvas absolutely kills all the others.” Vincent was thrilled by the light and bright colors in Arles, and eagerly ready to work. He painted flourishing orchards and the gathering of the harvest. The light in the south of France was completely different from that in the Netherlands, and the colors were also new. The Harvest is a true spectacle of color.