The Sower III (version 2)

The Sower III (version 2), painted in 1888 in Arles and now in the Van Gogh Museum, revisits a subject Van Gogh had explored repeatedly since his early Dutch period — the biblical parable of the sower and its secular counterpart in Millet's peasant paintings. In Arles, he transformed the sower into a Provençal subject, setting the figure against a blazing setting sun or wheat field lit by southern light. Van Gogh wrote extensively about the sower as a symbol: the agricultural act of casting seed onto earth connected to themes of faith, futility, and renewal that ran through his personal history. The yellow disk of the sun behind the sower in several versions gives the image an almost mystical intensity.

Oil on canvas with Van Gogh's characteristic Arles-period color intensity — the wheat field rendered in yellows and golds, the figure of the sower in dark silhouette against the glowing sky. His brushwork defines the furrows of the field in parallel strokes following the direction of plowing, organizing the ground plane into a dynamic pattern.