Green Wheat Fields, Auvers

Green Wheat Fields, Auvers, at the National Gallery of Art, was painted by Van Gogh in May 1890 shortly after his release from the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy. The move to Auvers brought him under the informal care of Dr Paul Gachet and into the rolling agricultural landscape north of Paris, which he explored obsessively in the final seventy days of his life. The still-green wheat, not yet golden, speaks of a season not yet complete — a resonance that readers of Van Gogh's biography have found difficult to ignore, though the painting itself is luminous and expansive rather than melancholy.

The composition is dominated by the broad sweep of green fields beneath a blue sky divided by a distant treeline. Van Gogh's brushwork follows the contours of the landscape — horizontal strokes across the field, curved marks in the sky — creating a dynamic surface energy that matches the wind-stirred appearance of growing grain.