Sheaves of Wheat

Vincent van Gogh

Oil on canvas

Dallas Museum of Art

Painted in July 1890 during Van Gogh's final weeks in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, Sheaves of Wheat (Dutch: Veld met korenschoven) is an oil on canvas executed in the distinctive double-square format the artist adopted almost exclusively in the last months of his life. The composition immerses the viewer directly in the field, filling the picture plane with eight freshly harvested sheaves bathed in intense yellow light and contrasted by vivid lavender shadows — a hallmark of Van Gogh's Post-Impressionist command of complementary color. A Dutch-born artist who produced more than 860 oil paintings in barely a decade, Van Gogh treated the wheat harvest as a deeply symbolic subject, seeing in the cycles of sowing and reaping a metaphor for human life, labor, and mortality. One of thirteen large horizontal canvases completed between mid-June and the end of July 1890, Sheaves of Wheat belongs to a remarkable final sequence of works that scholars regard as among the most accomplished of his career.