Farmhouse in a wheat field

Farmhouse in a Wheat Field, painted in June 1888 and now at the Van Gogh Museum, was produced during the most productive sustained period of Van Gogh's career — his first summer in Arles, when he was painting intensively in the fields around the city. The subject of farmhouse and wheat field was entirely consistent with his long-standing interest in agricultural life and working rural landscapes, but now treated with the blazing Provençal light and mature southern palette that transformed his work. The contrast between the solid, permanent architecture of the farmhouse and the sea of moving wheat that surrounds it — a subject that would reach its culmination in the famous Wheat Fields with Crows — is already fully established here.

The composition divides between the warm ochres and earth reds of the farmhouse architecture and the vivid yellow-green of the surrounding wheat. Van Gogh renders the wheat in characteristic swirling, directional strokes that suggest both the physical movement of the grain in the breeze and his own urgent mark-making energy. The farmhouse walls and roof are rendered with more stable, architectural handling. His Arles palette — intense blues, yellows, and greens under the southern sun — is fully established.