View source for Wheatfield with Crows

{{Short description|1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh}}
{{Italic title}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2020}}
{{Infobox artwork
| title              = Wheatfield with Crows
| image_file         = Korenveld met kraaien - s0149V1962 - Van Gogh Museum.jpg
| image_size         = 400px
| image_upright      = 1
| alt                = A painting of a wheat field with crows flying above.
| other_language_1   = [[Dutch language|Dutch]]
| artist             = [[Vincent van Gogh]]
| year               = July 1890
| medium             = [[Oil painting|Oil on canvas]]
| catalogue          = {{Flatlist}}
*[[Jacob Baart de la Faille|F779]]
*[[Jan Hulsker|JH2117]]
{{Endflatlist}}
| height_metric      = 50.2
| width_metric       = 103
| metric_unit        = cm
| imperial_unit      = in
| city               = [[Amsterdam]]
| museum             = [[Van Gogh Museum]]
}}

'''''Wheatfield with Crows''''' ({{langx|nl|Korenveld met kraaien}}) is a July 1890 painting by [[Vincent van Gogh]]. It has been cited by several critics as one of his greatest works.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=B6JTCCBSZuoC&pg=PA11|title=Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-garde|page=11|publisher=Metropolitan Museum of Art|date=2006|isbn=1588391957}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cqWFCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT101|title=Art, Literature and Culture from a Marxist Perspective|last=McKenna|first=Tony|publisher=Springer|date=2015|isbn=978-1137526618}}</ref>

It is commonly stated that this was Van Gogh's final painting. This association was popularized by Vincente Minnelli’s 1956 biopic ''[[Lust for Life (1956 film)|Lust for Life]]'', which depicts Van Gogh painting it immediately before shooting himself. His final painting in actuality was ''[[Tree Roots]]''.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Siegal |first=Nina |date=2020-07-28 |title=A Clue to van Gogh's Final Days Is Found in His Last Painting |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/arts/design/vincent-van-gogh-tree-roots.html |access-date=2022-09-28 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> The evidence of his letters suggests that ''Wheatfield with Crows'' was completed around 10 July and predates such paintings as ''[[The Town Hall at Auvers|Auvers Town Hall on 14 July 1890]]'' and ''[[Daubigny's Garden]]''.<ref name="Letter"/><ref name= "VGM"/><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.vggallery.com/painting/by_period/auvers.htm| title=Auvers-sur-Oise: May – July 1890 (75 paintings) |publisher=vggallery.com|access-date=29 July 2010}}</ref> Moreover, [[Jan Hulsker]] has written that a painting of harvested wheat, ''Field with Stacks of Wheat'' (F771), must be a later painting.<ref name= "Hulsker">{{cite book|last=Hulsker|first=Jan|title=The Complete Van Gogh: Paintings, Drawings, Sketches|year=1986|work=[[Random House]]|isbn=0-517-44867-X|page=480|publisher=Harrison House/Harry N. Abrams }}</ref>

==Provenance==
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-squares and Squares#Van Gogh.27s Double-square canvases|double-square canvas]], depicts a dramatic, cloudy sky filled with crows over a wheat field.<ref name= "VGM">{{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}}</ref> 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. <!--- No! 3 paths, uncertain horizon etc "An empty path pulls the audience into the painting."---> [[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."<!--- garbled and referenced next para anyway: Of making the painting Van Gogh wrote that he did not have a hard time depicting the sadness and emptiness of the painting, which was powerfully offset by the restorative nature of the countryside. ---><ref name="Edwards149">{{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 }}</ref> Kathleen Erickson finds the painting as expressing both sorrow and a sense of his life coming to an end.<ref name="Erickson97">{{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}}</ref> The crows are used by van Gogh as a symbol of death and rebirth, or of resurrection.<ref>{{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}}</ref><ref>Rosenblum, Robert (1975), Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko, p.100, New York: Harper & Row, {{ISBN|0-06-430057-9}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Erickson97 2">{{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}}</ref><ref>{{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}}</ref>

[[File:Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds - VGM F778.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|''[[Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds]]'' (1890)]]

About 10 July 1890 Van Gogh wrote to his brother [[Theo van Gogh (art dealer)|Theo]] and his wife [[Johanna van Gogh-Bonger|Jo Bonger]], saying that he had painted another three large canvases at [[Auvers-sur-Oise|Auvers]] since visiting them in Paris on 6 July.<ref name="Letter">{{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}}</ref> Two of these are described as <!--- source is "d'immenses" ---> immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, thought to be ''[[Wheat Fields (Van Gogh series)|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."<ref name=ingo/> They refer to a June 1880 letter of van Gogh's, in which he compared himself to a bird in a cage,<ref>{{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}}</ref> and remark: "The crows in the painting, in other words, were an altogether personal symbol closely associated with van Gogh's own life".<ref name=ingo>{{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}}</ref>

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.<ref>{{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}}</ref>

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".  

==See also==
*[[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#Career|Joan Mitchell]].

==Further reading==
*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}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
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{{Vincent van Gogh|state=collapsed}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wheatfield With Crows}}
[[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]]