Wheat Field with a Lark

Painted in 1887, while Vincent van Gogh was living in Paris, this oil on canvas is commonly known as Wheat Field with a Lark. At the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, where it is housed, it carries the Dutch title Korenveld met patrijs, which refers to a partridge rather than a lark. That mismatch between title and bird is one of the details that invites a closer look. The composition is built in broad horizontal bands. The lower part is a partly harvested field of wheat, and above it a sky patterned with light clouds fills much of the canvas. Poppies and cornflowers grow among the crop, adding small touches of red and blue against the golden mass. The lark, small and almost lost in the air, takes flight towards the upper left corner, and its movement offsets the stillness of the landscape. During these years Van Gogh was working with a palette that sought luminosity and the contrast of complementary colours, and this canvas reflects that interest in the light of open countryside. The available information does not offer a settled reading of what the bird signifies, so it is best understood primarily as a study of landscape, colour, and the sensation of wind moving through a field at harvest time.

Painter

Vincent van Gogh

Date

1887

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

54 × 65 cm

Museum

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Genre

landscape painting

Depicts

wheat, lark

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