The Cornshocks

The Cornshocks, painted in late July 1888 at Arles and now at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, depicts the harvest of wheat seen in the form of gathered sheaves or stooks — the traditional form in which cut grain was left standing in the fields to dry before threshing. Van Gogh had deep personal significance tied to harvest subjects: the annual agricultural cycle of labor and abundance that he had observed and drawn throughout his Dutch period found its most vividly expressive realization in his Arlesian work. The Arles harvest of summer 1888 produced several celebrated paintings on this theme, rendered with the full intensity of his newly mastered southern palette.

The cornshocks are rendered as solid, rounded forms that create a repeated compositional rhythm across the canvas — a satisfying pattern of warm volumetric shapes against the flat expanse of the harvested field. Van Gogh renders the gathered grain with strokes that capture its golden texture, building each shock through accumulated directional marks. His palette is warm and harvest-appropriate: deep yellows, ochres, and the cooler blues of sky and distance. The flat Arlesian landscape recedes clearly behind the foreground figures of the shocks.