A Wheatfield with Cypresses

Writing to his brother, Theo, from the asylum in Saint-Rémy on July 2, 1889, Van Gogh described his latest addition to the series: 'I have a canvas of cypresses with a few ears of wheat, poppies, a blue sky, which is like a multicoloured Scotch plaid and impasted like Monticellis.' Van Gogh regarded this sun-drenched landscape as one of his 'best' summer canvases and repeated the composition three times: first in a reed-pen drawing (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) and then in two oil variants he made later that fall (National Gallery, London; private collection).

Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose work had a far-reaching influence on 20th-century art. In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks but received little recognition during his lifetime.

Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius, the artist "where discourses on madness and creativity converge". His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists.

Van gogh attained widespread critical, commercial and popular success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter, whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist.