Wheat Field behind Saint-Paul 's Hospital with a Reaper

Van Gogh painted his wheat field with reaper from the grounds of the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum at Saint-Rémy, where he was voluntarily committed following his breakdown in Arles. The reaper was a figure of profound personal significance to him: in a letter to his brother Theo, he described the reaper as an image of death — 'in this reaper — vague figure fighting like a devil in the midst of the heat to get to the end of his task — I see the image of death, in the sense that humanity might be the wheat he is reaping.' The Museum Folkwang's canvas is one of the most emotionally weighted of all his asylum paintings.

Van Gogh builds the wheat field through intense, swirling strokes of gold and yellow that convey both the physical abundance of the harvest and its psychological weight. The small figure of the reaper is almost lost in the vast golden field, while the enclosing walls of the asylum grounds create a contained, claustrophobic space. The paint is applied with furious energy.