''Wheatfield with Crows'' ( nl, Korenveld met kraaien) is a July 1890 painting by

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, inc ...

. It has been cited by several critics as one of his greatest works. It is commonly stated that this was van Gogh's final painting because Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopic “Lust for Life” depicts van Gogh painting it shortly before killing himself. His final painting in actuality was " Tree Roots." The evidence of his letters suggests that ''Wheatfield with Crows'' was completed around 10 July and predates such paintings as '' Auvers Town Hall on 14 July 1890'' and ''

Daubigny's Garden ''Daubigny's Garden'', painted three times by Vincent van Gogh, depicts the enclosed garden of Charles-François Daubigny, a painter whom Van Gogh admired throughout his life. Van Gogh started with a small study of a section of the garden. Then ...

''. Moreover,

Jan Hulsker Jan Hulsker (2 October 1907, The Hague – 9 November 2002, Vancouver) was a Dutch art historian especially noted for his work on Vincent van Gogh. He studied Dutch literature in Leiden and was promoted with a thesis on the author Aart van der Lee ...

has written that a painting of harvested wheat, ''Field with Stacks of Wheat'' (F771), must be a later painting.

Provenance

The

Van Gogh Museum The Van Gogh Museum () is a Dutch art museum dedicated to the works of Vincent van Gogh and his contemporaries in the Museum Square in Amsterdam South, close to the Stedelijk Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw. The museum opene ...

's ''Wheatfield with Crows'' was painted in July 1890, in the last weeks of van Gogh's life. Many have claimed it as his last painting, while it is also possible '' Tree Roots'', or the previously mentioned ''Daubigny's Garden'', was his final painting. ''Wheat Field with Crows,'' made on a double-square canvas, depicts a dramatic, cloudy sky filled with crows over a wheat field. A sense of isolation is heightened by a central path leading nowhere and by the uncertain direction of flight of the crows. The windswept wheat field fills two-thirds of the canvas.

Jules Michelet Jules Michelet (; 21 August 1798 – 9 February 1874) was a French historian and an author on other topics whose major work was a history of France and its culture. His aphoristic style emphasized his anti-clerical republicanism. In Michelet' ...

, one of van Gogh's favorite authors, wrote of crows: "They interest themselves in everything, and observe everything. The ancients, who lived far more completely than ourselves in and with nature, found it no small profit to follow, in a hundred obscure things where human experience as yet affords no light, the directions of so prudent and sage a bird." Kathleen Erickson finds the painting as expressing both sorrow and a sense of his life coming to an end. The crows are used by van Gogh as a symbol of death and rebirth, or of resurrection. The road, in contrasting colors of red and green, is said by Erickson to be a metaphor for a sermon he gave based on Bunyan's ''

The Pilgrim's Progress ''The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come'' is a 1678 Christian allegory written by John Bunyan. It is regarded as one of the most significant works of theological fiction in English literature and a progenitor of t ...

'' where the pilgrim is sorrowful that the road is so long, yet rejoices because the Eternal City waits at the journey's end. Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778

Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778

About 10 July 1890 van Gogh wrote to his brother

Theo Theo is a given name and a hypocorism. Greek origin Many names beginning with the root "Theo-" derive from the Ancient Greek word ''theos'' (''θεός''), which means god, for example: *Feminine names: Thea, Theodora, Theodosia, Theophania, ...

and his wife Jo Bonger, saying that he had painted another three large canvases at Auvers since visiting them in Paris on 6 July. Two of these are described as immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, thought to be '' Wheatfield under Clouded Sky'' and ''Wheatfield with Crows'', and the third is ''

''. He wrote that he had made a point of expressing sadness, later adding "extreme loneliness" (''de la solitude extrême''), but also says he believes the canvases show what he considers healthy and fortifying about the countryside (and adds that he intended to take them to Paris as soon as possible). Walther and Metzger, in ''Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings'', state that "There is nothing in van Gogh's words to support a simplistic interpretation along the lines of artistic ''angst'' and despair – nor is there any evidence for the widely-held belief that it was this painting that van Gogh had on his easel at the time he killed himself." They refer to a June 1880 letter of van Gogh's, in which he compared himself to a bird in a cage, and remark: "The crows in the painting, in other words, were an altogether personal symbol closely associated with van Gogh's own life". These painting are all examples of van Gogh's elongated double-square canvases, used exclusively by him in the last few weeks of his life, in June and July 1890. The painting is held in the collection of the

in Amsterdam, as is ''Wheatfield under Clouded Sky''. ''Wheatfield with Crows'' was stolen and quickly recovered in 1991 along with 19 other van Gogh paintings; the painting was "severely damaged" during the heist.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wheatfield With Crows Paintings by Vincent van Gogh Paintings of Auvers-sur-Oise by Vincent van Gogh 1890 paintings Collections of the Van Gogh Museum Birds in art Farming in art

Provenance

See also

Further reading

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