Vincent van Gogh painted a series of three similar works featuring cypress trees standing sentry over golden fields of wheat buffeted by wind during his stay as a voluntary patient at an asylum at Saint-Rémy, France. He had suffered some debilitating mental health episodes over the summer of 1889, and turned to this bucolic subject when he was recovered enough to paint again in late August. Sketching the scene in reed-pen, he wrote to his brother Theo, “I have a canvas of cypresses with some ears of wheat, …a blue sky like a piece of Scotch plaid; the former painted with a thick impasto…”

With his swirling, animated brushwork almost sculpting the oil paint, he captures the movement of the clouds scudding across the sky over the windswept field. Our Luminary celebrates a moment in detail of the impasto technique in this masterwork.

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