![Vincent van Gogh - Wheatfield with a Reaper [1889]](http://c5.staticflickr.com/6/5776/30915642596_b9f3da7b2f_b.jpg)
For the first few months of his hospitalisation in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh was not allowed to leave the grounds. This view, which he painted from his room, shows a walled wheatfield with mountains in the background. A reaper labours in the blazing sun. The wheat, painted with thick gobs of yellow, undulates all around him. It was a symbol for Van Gogh of the eternal cycle of nature and the transience of life. As for the reaper, he wrote to his brother that he saw in the figure ‘the image of death [...] in this sense that humanity would be the wheat being reaped.’ He added, however, that this death was ‘almost smiling. It’s all yellow except for a line of violet hills – a pale, blond yellow. I myself find that funny, that I saw it like that through the iron bars of a cell.’
[Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam - Oil on canvas, 73.2 x 92.7 cm]