Historical / contextual reference

Photograph of the specific selected museum object; identity checked by object ID and accession.

Credit: Vincent van Gogh / The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchase, The Annenberg Foundation Gift, 1993
Rights: Public domain; Met Open Access

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Van Gogh's landscape places dark cypresses beside a wheat field beneath a sky animated by thick brushwork. The Metropolitan Museum identifies this canvas as an outdoor study from 1889 and distinguishes it from two later studio versions. That distinction matters in an archive: similar compositions may be separate works rather than duplicate photographs of one painting. The visible paint can help a future viewer consider how an artist turns an encounter with weather, trees and cultivated land into a deliberately worked surface. The painting also belongs to a network of correspondence and gifts, since Van Gogh described it to his brother and made a smaller version for family members.

Why preserve it: Curatorial interpretation: this work offers a way to compare the experience of a landscape with its painted transformation. The related versions and letters show artistic work circulating through personal relationships as well as public collections.

Keep in mind: This entry identifies the Met canvas, accession 1993.132. Do not merge it with the National Gallery version. Expressive brushwork is not evidence from which to diagnose the artist's mental state.