Vincent Van Gogh: Wheatfield Under Threatening Skies (1890)

Probably Vincent’s last painting, certainly among the last few, this is a strongly narrative picture that is an externalisation of the internal. It can be interpreted as an Expressionistic representation of Vincent’s own inner landscape. Divided in two, between the bright sunny fertile field and ominous darkly threatening storm clouds, the painting is vigorous and impassioned, with Vincent using his fingers and both ends of the brush to hack and work into the paint. Vincent swung from extreme passion and euphoria, when he was painting, to deep despair and depression, linked with his undiagnosed condition (now thought to be a form of epilepsy).

Here we see the bright, fruitful wheat that represents creativity thrashed about in the strong winds with the inevitable rains about to beat down the harvest, under the bleak impending clouds of doom. The canvas is almost half-and-half, bright versus dark as Vincent’s life had been, but in this painting, the crows have been added, bringing the black down into the brighter lower half, corrupting the vibrant yellow of the wheat. A path swings into the painting and takes the viewer into the middle of the canvas where it seems to end, indicating no clear direction.

This is a painting of the path that Vincent walked along, into the middle of the field where he was shot in the stomach, before walking back and returning to his room, where he died two days later. No one knows for sure the details of these events, but the generally accepted explanation of suicide has been brought into question and one credible theory is that Vincent was accidentally shot by a teenager whom he knew, and rather than implicate the boy, allowed people to believe he had shot himself.

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Image of this painting at the WebMuseum Van Gogh pages