Wheat Field with Cypresses

Saint-Paul-de-Mausole mental asylum at Saint-Rémy near Arles, France, where Van Gogh was voluntarily a patient from May 1889 to May 1890. The works were inspired by the view from the window at the asylum towards the Alpilles

olive trees in the middle distance, with hills and mountains visible behind, and white clouds swirling in an azure sky above. The first version (F717) was painted in late June or early July 1889, during a period of frantic painting and shortly after Van Gogh completed The Starry Night, at a time when he was fascinated by the cypress. It is likely to have been painted "en plein air", near the subject, when Van Gogh was able to leave the precincts of the asylum. Van Gogh regarded this work as one of his best summer paintings. In a letter to his brother, Theo, written on 2 July 1889, Vincent described the painting: "I have a canvas of cypresses with some ears of wheat, some poppies, a blue sky like a piece of Scotch plaid; the former painted with a thick impasto like the Monticelli

emerald green for the bushes and cypresses, and touches of vermilion for the poppies in the foreground and also synthetic ultramarine.^[2]

Emil Bührle in Zurich in 1952. His son, Dieter Bührle, bought the painting in 1993, and subsequently donated it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for $57 million using funds donated by publisher, diplomat and philanthropist Walter Annenberg