Harvest in Provence

Harvest in Provence is one of a series of wheat field paintings that Van Gogh produced during an intensive burst of work in the countryside around Arles in June 1888. The canvas depicts a broad golden field of ripe grain stretching toward a line of low buildings and distant hills under a radiant summer sky. Haystacks and sheaves punctuate the landscape, recording the rhythms of agricultural labor that Van Gogh found endlessly compelling.

The painting captures what Van Gogh described in his letters as "the burning brightness of the heat wave," a quality he pursued by working rapidly outdoors, painting "quickly, quickly, quickly, and in a hurry just like the harvester who is silent under the blazing sun, intent only on the reaping." The saturated yellows and warm ochres convey both the physical intensity of the Provençal sun and the artist's emotional identification with the landscape and its workers.

This intimate, relatively compact canvas complements Van Gogh's larger and more celebrated harvest compositions from the same period, offering a more focused, concentrated view of the grain fields that dominated his imagination during his first summer in the south of France. The painting is held at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.