Masterpiece Story: Wheatfield with Cypresses by Vincent van Gogh

Historical Context

Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) is one of the most famous artists in Western art history. He was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who was under-appreciated during his lifetime but then became a legendary superstar after his death. His turbulent story is well-known and has become the foundation for the stock image of the unstable and misunderstood artist.

Many of Van Gogh’s paintings have become icons of Western culture such as Starry Night (1889) and Irises (1899). Another masterpiece from the productive year of 1889 is Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Cypresses now at the National Gallery in London, UK. It expresses the emotional intensity and psychic pressure that have become trademarks of Van Gogh’s signature style.

Overall Composition

Wheatfield with Cypresses is an oil on canvas landscape measuring 72.1 × 90.9 cm (28.4 × 35.8 in.).  The painting presents a country perspective from the region of Provence in southeastern France. It features typical Provençal motifs such as cypress trees, an olive bush, a wheatfield, and mountains.

Foreground: Wheatfield

A golden field of wheat dominates the foreground of the painting. Van Gogh has painted the wheatfield with a variety of yellow hues to simulate the plants’ bright coloring. Repetitive vertical brushstrokes imply the fibrous wheat stalks while diagonally sideward brushstrokes imply the feathery heads full of wheat kernels. The two opposing directions create a layered texture throughout the field that suggests a swaying movement in a blowing breeze.

Midground: Cypress Trees

The composition’s midground is dominated by two clusters of plants. Two tall cypresses command the right side and a stout olive bush commands the left side. The cypress trees are painted in a bold deep green and patterned with thick dark lines. Individual brushstrokes along the trees’ edges give the plants a sense of body and feathered texture.

Their two forms are thickest at the base and rise majestically upwards into thinner and thinner proportions until they form a pointed pinnacle. With a stretch of imagination, they could be said to have the lines and proportions of an ancient Egyptian obelisk. The cypress trees express bold architectural verticality.

Midground: Olive Bush

To the midground left is a stout olive bush. Van Gogh paints the olive bush in a symphony of blue-green brushstrokes. They flow and collide in every direction and create a maze-like confusion for the viewer’s eyes. The olive bush acts as a visual foil to the cypress trees by being their antithesis in almost every quality. It has a short, wide, and pale body with multi-directional brush strokes, while the trees have tall, thin, and bold bodies with mono-directional brush strokes. The plant opposites add visual interest and weight to both sides of the composition.

Background: Clouds & Mountains

A cloudy sky and the hard ridge of the Alpilles mountains dominate the background. Both formations feature delicate hues of robin egg blue boarded by edges of bold navy blue. They echo each other with their color scheme, but they contrast each other with their shading. The clouds are more wispy and whimsical with their blurred edges and heavy use of multiple white shades, while the Alpilles mountains appear harder and sterner with their sharp edges and more uniform shading. Like the olive bush and cypress trees, the clouds and mountains are visual foils and add interest to the vertical element of the painting.

Expressive Energy

Wheatfield with Cypresses is a pure landscape without any people or animals populating the scene. Some viewers may dismissively call it dull, but most viewers should be able to see and feel the energy throughout the scene. A warm wind is blowing across the landscape as it whips the clouds into rhythmic patterns and sways the trees, bushes, and fields. The varying thickness of lines and brushstrokes inject tactile expressions of soft forms and hard surfaces.

Emotional Exploration

The painting is very expressive of movement and sensation. It is very expressive of the soul-searching that Van Gogh may have felt while painting this image while resting at the psychiatric hospital of Saint-Paul de Mausole in Saint-Rémy. Therefore, Wheatfield with Cypresses is not just a masterpiece of landscape painting but is also a masterpiece of emotional exploration. One’s emotions affect one’s perspective. One’s state of well-being affects one’s view of the world. Wheatfield with Cypresses, even if for a brief moment, may have given Vincent van Gogh some happiness.