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  • Wheat Field with Cypresses
  • Wheat Field with Cypresses
  • Wheat Field with Cypresses
  • Wheat Field with Cypresses

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890)
Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889
Oil on canvas; 28 3/4 x 36 3/4 in. (73 x 93.4 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 1993 (1993.132)

Curator Comment

Writing to his brother, Theo, from the asylum in Saint-Rémy in early July 1889, Van Gogh described his latest addition to the series he had launched that June: "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 . . . and the wheat field in the sun, which represents the extreme heat, very thick too." Van Gogh regarded this sun-drenched landscape as one of his "best" summer canvases. He immediately took up the motif in a reed pen drawing (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) to give Theo a better sense of his recent work, and that autumn he painted two variants: a second version in oil of the same size (National Gallery, London), in which he aimed for a more concise and harmonious pictorial effect, and a smaller-scale replica (private collection) that was part of a choice group of "reductions" made for his mother and sister.

In addition to the gift and bequest of their collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, Ambassador and Mrs. Annenberg have been extraordinarily generous to the Museum in general, funding important acquisitions such as Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Cypresses, gallery renovations, publications, and educational programs.

Susan Alyson Stein, curator, Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art

Provenance

The artist; the artist's brother, Theo van Gogh, Paris, 1889–d. 1891; his widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, Amsterdam, in trust for their son, Vincent Willem van Gogh, 1891–1900; Émile Schuffenecker, from 1900; Louis-Alexandre Berthier, prince de Wagram, Paris, from ca. 1906; [Galerie Barbazanges, Paris, until 1910]; [Paul Cassirer, Berlin, 1910]; Franz von Mendelssohn, Berlin, 1910–d. 1935; Mendelssohn family, Germany, later Switzerland, 1935–51; Emil Bührle, Zurich, 1951–d. 1956; his son, Dieter Bührle, Zurich, 1956–93.

Bibliography

John Leighton, "Vincent van Gogh's ‘A Cornfield, with Cypresses,'" National Gallery Technical Bulletin 11 (1987): 42–45, fig. 1; Masterpieces of European Painting, 1800–1920, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 171, 259, no. 159.

Related Links

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History