In his final weeks in Auvers, Vincent van Gogh often returned to the wheatfields.
Under stormy skies, he painted vast stretches of land, in his words holding ‘sadness, extreme loneliness.’ So it’s not strange that these landscapes are often perceived as dark or foreboding. But in these same fields, Vincent also saw something ‘healthy and fortifying.’ As if the same fields could hold both weight and relief at once.
Perhaps that is what we’re seeing: not a single mood, but a moment where opposing feelings exist side by side. What do you see in them?
1 © Van Gogh Museum
2 © Van Gogh Museum
3 © Philadelphia Museum of Art