Landscape with Wheat Sheaves and Rising Moon

Vincent van Gogh

Oil on canvas

Kröller-Müller Museum

Painted in July 1889 during Van Gogh's voluntary confinement at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, this oil on canvas depicts a moonrise over the Alpilles mountains, with monumental wheat sheaves dominating the foreground in dull ochre-yellow and violet tones. The work belongs to Van Gogh's celebrated Wheat Field series, in which he repeatedly observed and recorded the same enclosed field visible from his asylum window across changing seasons and times of day. Executed largely from memory and imagination in his studio—an approach encouraged by Gauguin during their earlier collaboration—Van Gogh applied a final layer of small, light purple brushstrokes to intensify the nocturnal atmosphere, though these have since discoloured to whiter stripes, diminishing the effect he originally intended. The painting stands as a compelling example of Van Gogh's Post-Impressionist practice: expressive, emotionally charged brushwork in service of a deeply observed natural world.