| Wheatfield with Crows | |
|---|---|
 An 1890 Van Gogh painting of a wheat field with crows flying above | |
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| Artist | Vincent van Gogh |
| Year | July 1890 |
| Catalogue | |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 50.2 cm × 103 cm (19.8 in × 41 in) |
| Location | Van Gogh Museum,Amsterdam |
Wheatfield with Crows (Dutch:Korenveld met kraaien) is a July 1890 painting byVincent van Gogh. It has been cited by several critics as one of his greatest works.[1][2]
It is commonly stated that this was Van Gogh's final painting. This association was popularized by Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopicLust for Life, which depicts Van Gogh painting it immediately before shooting himself. His final painting in actuality wasTree Roots.[3] The evidence of his letters suggests thatWheatfield with Crows was completed around 10 July and predates such paintings asAuvers Town Hall on 14 July 1890 andDaubigny's Garden.[4][5][6] Moreover,Jan Hulsker has written that a painting of harvested wheat,Field with Stacks of Wheat (F771), must be a later painting.[7]
TheVan Gogh Museum'sWheatfield 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 likely thatTree Roots was his final painting.
Wheat Field with Crows, made on adouble-square canvas, depicts a dramatic, cloudy sky filled with crows over a wheat field.[5] 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, 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."[8] Kathleen Erickson finds the painting as expressing both sorrow and a sense of his life coming to an end.[9] The crows are used by van Gogh as a symbol of death and rebirth, or of resurrection.[10][11] 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'sThe Pilgrim's Progress where the pilgrim is sorrowful that the road is so long, yet rejoices because the Eternal City waits at the journey's end.[12][13]
About 10 July 1890 Van Gogh wrote to his brotherTheo and his wifeJo Bonger, saying that he had painted another three large canvases atAuvers since visiting them in Paris on 6 July.[4] Two of these are described as immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, thought to beWheatfield under Clouded Sky andWheatfield with Crows, and the third isDaubigny's Garden. 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, inVan Gogh: The Complete Paintings, state that "There is nothing in Van Gogh's words to support a simplistic interpretation along the lines of artisticangst 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."[14] They refer to a June 1880 letter of van Gogh's, in which he compared himself to a bird in a cage,[15] and remark: "The crows in the painting, in other words, were an altogether personal symbol closely associated with van Gogh's own life".[14]
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 theVan Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, as isWheatfield 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.[16]
The Indonesian composerAnanda Sukarlan composed a piece with the same title for flute and piano inspired by this and three other paintings, under a cycle titled "The Springs of Vincent".
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Media related toWheatfield with Crows at Wikimedia Commons52°21′30″N4°52′52″E / 52.35833°N 4.88111°E /52.35833; 4.88111
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