Vincent painted Wheatfield with a Lark in the fields outside Paris in the suburbs of Asnieres sur Seine in the summer of 1887. He portrayed the grain stalks at their fullest summer height, blowing in the wind with a bird taking flight above the field, against a sky of blue, pink and white.

Vincent does not write about this painting specifically in any correspondence so we cannot know beyond doubt his intent or the exact date of the work.  It was probably painted outside of the barrier walls surrounding Paris where countryside and fields still remained in the late 1880’s.

The landscape has three distinct sections, each done with different brushstrokes.  The stubbly yellow foreground in short, near vertical strokes with a slight tilt to the right, seem to accentuate the lean of the wheat shafts to the left.  The lark is just left of center and flies at a similar angle as the stalks of leaning wheat.  The sky of wider horizontal strokes is a deeper blue at top than just above the field of wheat stalks and to the left of the bird Vincent uses more white while to the right, more pink for the clouds.  The stalks are of careful dabs and long strokes of shades of green with complimentary red flowers left center.  Towards the top of the stalks he adds darker blue dabs of shadow as well as vertical strokes within the stalks.

At this time Vincent is living in Montmartre and walking down the hill to paint around Asnieres and the Seine.  He works along the banks of the river with Paul Signac during the summer of 1887 and will begin a lifelong companionship in painting and correspondence with Emile Bernard in the coming weeks.  He has seen the works of Signac and Pissarro and the other pointillists or divisionists and is developing his own technique.  He is experimenting with color theory and line direction and thickness and their link to human emotions and by the end of summer will give up pointillism as too restrictive.

Vincent is an admirer of the author Michilet and the painter Jules Breton, both of whom may have influenced this canvas.  Michelet wrote in L’ Oiseau that the lark was the farmer’s loyal best friend and it’s song was one of hope and it’s behaviors exemplifying brotherly love.  Breton created a similar canvas of the benediction of wheat stalks in a field in 1857 which was later bought by the French nation entitled “The Blessing of the Wheat” which is shown as a related image.  Also shown is Vincent’s later depiction of a wheat field and birds, but this time it is in Auvers and in the last month of his life with a different feeling altogether.

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18 months before, Vincent writes Theo from Antwerp:

To Theo. Antwerp, Sunday, 14 February 1886

Painting, Oil on Canvas
Paris: Summer, 1887
Van Gogh Museum
Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Europe
F: 310, JH: 1274