A Wheatfield with Cypresses is any of three similar 1889 oil paintings by
Vincent van Gogh, as part of his wheat field series. All were executed at the
Saint-Paul-de-Mausole mental asylum at Saint-Rémy near Arles, France, where Van
Gogh was voluntarily a patient from May 1889 to May 1890. The works were
inspired by the view from the window at the asylum towards the Les Alpilles
mountains. The painting depicts golden fields of
ripe wheat, a dark fastigate Provençale cypress towering like a green obelisk to
the right and lighter green olive trees in the middle distance, with hills and
mountains visible behind, and white clouds swirling in an azure sky above.
The first version was painted in late June or early July 1889, during a period
of frantic painting and shortly after Van Gogh completed The Starry Night, at
a time when he was fascinated by the cypress. It is likely to have been
painted "en plein air", near the subject, when Van Gogh was able to leave
the precincts of the asylum. Van Gogh regarded this work as one of his best
summer paintings. In a letter to his brother, Theo, written on 2 July 1889,
Vincent described the painting: "I have a canvas of cypresses with some ears of
wheat, some poppies, a blue sky like a piece of Scotch plaid; the former
painted with a thick impasto like the Monticelli's, and the wheat field in the
sun, which represents the extreme heat, very thick too."
Van Gogh suffered a bout of severe mental illness in late July and early
August, but was able to resume painting in late August and early September 1889.
After making a reed-pen drawing of the work, now held by the Van Gogh Museum in
Amsterdam, he copied the composition twice in oils in his studio, one
approximately the same size and a smaller version. The larger studio
version was probably painted in a single sitting, with a few minor later
adjustments adding touches of yellow and brown. Van Gogh sketched out the design
with charcoal underdrawing; he applied thin paint on the cypress trees and sky,
with the ground allowed to show in places, and thick impasto for the
foreground wheat and the clouds above. Characteristically, he preferred the
brilliant white of zinc white for the white clouds rather than lead white,
despite its poor drying qualities, with his palette also including cobalt blue
for the sky, shades of chrome yellow for the wheat field, viridian and emerald
green for the bushes and cypresses, and touches of vermilion for the poppies in
the foreground and also synthetic ultramarine. The July "plein air"
version was much more heavily worked, and may be considered a study for the
more considered September studio painting. He sent the smaller and less
accomplished studio version to his mother and sister as a gift.
Vincent sent the larger July and September versions to his brother in
Paris later in September 1889. The July version was sold by Theo's widow in 1900
to artist Émile Schuffenecker. It passed through the hands of collector Alexandre
Berthier and art dealer Paul Cassirer in Paris, where it was first exhibited and
photographed at Galerie Eugène Druet in November 1909. It was sold to banker
Franz von Mendelssohn in Berlin in 1910 and remained with the Mendelssohn family
in Germany and Switzerland until it was sold to industrialist Emil Bührle in
Zurich in 1952. His son, Dieter Bührle, sold the painting in 1993 to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for $57 million using funds donated by
publisher, diplomat and philanthropist Walter Annenberg.
The National Gallery in London holds a similar version painted in Van Gogh's
studio in September 1889, bought with the Courtauld Fund in 1923. It is
unlined, and was never varnished or waxed. The third smaller version is held
by a private collection. Footnotes
References National Gallery entry
Metropolitan Museum of Art entry Vincent Van Gogh's A Cornfield, with
Cypresses, John Leighton, Anthony Reeve, Ashok Roy and Raymond White, National
Gallery Technical Bulletin, 1987, Volume 11, pp 42–59.
Annenberg Donates A van Gogh to the Met, New York Times, 25 May 1993
External links Media related to Wheat Field with
Cypresses by Vincent van Gogh at Wikimedia Commons
Vincent van Gogh, A Wheatfield with Cypresses, ColourLex