Wheatfield with Crows

The Van Gogh Museum's Wheatfield with Crows was painted in July 1890, in the last weeks of Van Gogh's life. Many have claimed it as his last painting, while it is likely that Tree Roots was his final painting.

Wheat Field with Crows, made on a double-square canvas, depicts a dramatic, cloudy sky filled with crows over a wheat field.{{cite web |url=http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?page=3343&lang=en#moretotell |title=Wheat Field with Crows |work=Collection |publisher=Van Gogh Museum |access-date=31 March 2011}} A sense of isolation is heightened by a central path leading nowhere and by the uncertain direction of flight of the crows. The windswept wheat field fills two-thirds of the canvas. Jules Michelet, one of van Gogh's favorite authors, wrote of crows: "They interest themselves in everything, and observe everything. The ancients, who lived far more completely than ourselves in and with nature, found it no small profit to follow, in a hundred obscure things where human experience as yet affords no light, the directions of so prudent and sage a bird."{{cite book | title=Van Gogh and God: A Creative Spiritual Quest | author=Edwards, C | publisher=Loyola Press | location=Chicago | year=1989 | pages=78, 186 | isbn=0-8294-0621-2 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fYA9QzwvsekC&pg=PA78 }} Kathleen Erickson finds the painting as expressing both sorrow and a sense of his life coming to an end.{{cite book | title=At Eternity's Gate: The Spiritual Vision of Vincent Van Gogh | author=Erickson, K | publisher=William B. Eerdsman Publishing | location=Grand Rapids, MI | year=1998 | pages=103, 148 | isbn=0-8028-3856-1 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Sz0Pla9mLSYC&pg=PA103}} The crows are used by van Gogh as a symbol of death and rebirth, or of resurrection.{{cite book|last=Werness|first=Hope B.|title=Continuum Encyclopedia of Animal Symbolism in World Art|year=2007|publisher=Continuum International|isbn=978-0-8264-1913-2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iBSDddO-9PoC&q=crows+van+gogh+symbols&pg=PA106|page= 106}}Rosenblum, Robert (1975), Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko, p.100, New York: Harper & Row, {{ISBN|0-06-430057-9}} The road, in contrasting colors of red and green, is said by Erickson to be a metaphor for a sermon he gave based on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress where the pilgrim is sorrowful that the road is so long, yet rejoices because the Eternal City waits at the journey's end.{{cite book | title=At Eternity's Gate: The Spiritual Vision of Vincent Van Gogh | author=Erickson, K | publisher=William B. Eerdsman Publishing | location=Grand Rapids, MI | year=1998 | pages=162–163 | isbn=0-8028-3856-1 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Sz0Pla9mLSYC&pg=PA162}}{{cite web|title=Van Gogh's First Sunday Sermon: 29 October 1876|url=http://www.vggallery.com/misc/sermon.htm|publisher=vggallery.com|access-date=17 July 2011}}

File:Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778.jpg (1890)]]

About 10 July 1890 Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo and his wife Jo Bonger, saying that he had painted another three large canvases at Auvers since visiting them in Paris on 6 July.{{cite web|title=To Theo van Gogh and Jo van Gogh-Bonger. Auvers-sur-Oise, on or about Thursday, 10 July 1890|url=http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let898/letter.html|work=Vincent van Gogh: The Letters|publisher=Van Gogh Museum|access-date=16 July 2011}} Two of these are described as immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, thought to be Wheatfield under Clouded Sky and Wheatfield with Crows, and the third is Daubigny's Garden. He wrote that he had made a point of expressing sadness, later adding "extreme loneliness" (de la solitude extrême), but also says he believes the canvases show what he considers healthy and fortifying about the countryside (and adds that he intended to take them to Paris as soon as possible).

Walther and Metzger, in Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings, state that "There is nothing in Van Gogh's words to support a simplistic interpretation along the lines of artistic angst and despair – nor is there any evidence for the widely-held belief that it was this painting that Van Gogh had on his easel at the time he killed himself." They refer to a June 1880 letter of van Gogh's, in which he compared himself to a bird in a cage,{{cite web|title=To Theo van Gogh. Cuesmes, between about Tuesday, 22 and Thursday, 24 June 1880|url=http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let155/letter.html|work=Vincent van Gogh: The Letters|publisher=Van Gogh Museum|access-date=17 July 2011}} and remark: "The crows in the painting, in other words, were an altogether personal symbol closely associated with van Gogh's own life".{{cite book|title=Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings|year=2010|first1= Ingo F.|first2= Rainer|last1 = Walther|last2= Metzger|pages= 680–682|work=Taschen|publisher=Taschen |isbn=978-3-8365-2299-1}}

These painting are all examples of Van Gogh's elongated double-square canvases, used exclusively by him in the last few weeks of his life, in June and July 1890.

The painting is held in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, as is Wheatfield under Clouded Sky.

Wheatfield with Crows was stolen and quickly recovered in 1991 along with 19 other Van Gogh paintings; the painting was "severely damaged" during the heist.{{cite news |last1=Fisher |first1=Marc |title=20 STOLEN VAN GOGHS ARE QUICKLY LOCATED |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1991/04/15/20-stolen-van-goghs-are-quickly-located/6f6fb1f2-fc0f-45b7-9f1f-1619ac51798d/ |newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=29 May 2020 |date=15 April 1991}}

The Indonesian composer Ananda Sukarlan composed a piece with the same title for flute and piano inspired by this and three other paintings, under a cycle titled "The Springs of Vincent".

• List of works by Vincent van Gogh
• For other paintings of wheat fields by Van Gogh see Wheat Fields (Van Gogh series).
• For Joan Mitchell's 1987 painting No Birds, a homage to Wheatfield with Crows, see her article Joan Mitchell.

• Erickson, Kathleen Powers. At Eternity's Gate: The Spiritual Vision of Vincent van Gogh, 1998. {{ISBN|0-8028-4978-4}}
• {{cite book|title=Van Gogh: The Complete Paintings|year=2010|first1= Ingo F.|first2= Rainer|last1 = Walther|last2= Metzger|pages= 680–682|publisher=Taschen |isbn=978-3-8365-2299-1}}

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Category:Paintings by Vincent van Gogh

Category:Paintings of Auvers-sur-Oise by Vincent van Gogh

Category:1890 paintings

Category:Collection of the Van Gogh Museum

Category:Farming in art

Category:Corvids in art

Category:Oil on canvas paintings