Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds

Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds (in Dutch, Korenveld onder onweerslucht) is an 1890 oil painting by Vincent van Gogh. The painting measures 50.4 cm × 101.3 cm (19.8 in × 39.9 in). It depicts a relatively flat and featureless landscape with fields of green wheat, under a foreboding dark blue sky with a few heavy white clouds. The horizon divides the work almost into two, with shades of green and yellow below and shades of blue and white above. Since 1973 it has been on permanent loan to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. This very late work was painted in early July 1890, just a few weeks before Van Gogh's death. It was one of several paintings of wheat fields that he made in Auvers-sur-Oise, in an unusually elongated double-square format: other examples include Wheatfield with Crows (F779) and Landscape at Auvers in the Rain (F811). In a letter of around 10 July 1890, Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo and sister-in-law Jo that he had already painted three large canvases at Auvers since visiting them in Paris on 6 July. One of the three paintings was Daubigny's Garden (F777). The other two he described as "immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies" – probably this painting and Wheatfield with Crows – in which he was "trying to express sadness, extreme loneliness" (immenses étendues de blés sous des ciels troublés … chercher à exprimer de la tristesse, de la solitude extreme). He added that he intended to take them to Paris as soon as possible, as "these canvases will tell you what I can’t say in words, what I consider healthy and fortifying about the countryside" (j'espère vous les apporter à Paris le plus tôt possible … ces toiles vous diront ce que je ne sais dire en paroles, ce...