Landscape with wheat sheaves and rising moon

Painted at Saint-Rémy in July 1889, this twilight scene shows wheat sheaves silhouetted against a rising full moon — one of Van Gogh's most lyrical nocturnal works. He had been deeply moved by Millet's images of harvest workers and the symbolic weight of wheat as both sustenance and cycle of life and death. The rising moon adds a note of cosmic scale to the human activity of harvest. Held at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, it exemplifies Van Gogh's ability to charge an ordinary agricultural scene with deep emotional and symbolic resonance.

The painting is structured around the cool yellow disc of the moon rising against a deep blue sky, its light silhouetting the conical wheat sheaves below. Short, curved strokes animate the sky with movement while the foreground is built with more anchored, upward brushwork. The colour scheme of blue and yellow — Van Gogh's most characteristic complementary pairing — dominates the entire composition.