Reaper (Van Gogh series)

Sketch after F617 (F1546), sent with a 2 July 1889 letter to his brother

Van Gogh began painting Reaper (F617) in late June 1889.[6] He first mentions the painting in a 25 June 1889 letter to his brother Theo van Gogh where he describes it as "a wheatfield, very yellow and very bright, perhaps the brightest canvas [he has] done". He writes that it was among 12 paintings on which he was currently working.[7] The painting is mentioned again in a 2 July 1889 letter:

The latest one begun is the wheatfield where there's a little reaper and a big sun. The canvas is all yellow with the exception of the wall and the background of purplish hills.[8][9]

In the painting measuring 73 cm × 92 cm (29 in × 36 in), the reaper is depicted with just a few brushstrokes of blue in swirling yellow wheat that leaves an outline of the figure in green. His sickle is only a single brushstroke and barely visible.[1]

With the 2 July letter, Van Gogh included around ten sketches of the paintings he was working on at the time, including a sketch (F1546) of this painting.[10][11] The painting appears to have been mostly completed by then.[6] However, Van Gogh was making further changes to the work while he described it in more detail in a later letter to his brother written on 4–5 September 1889:

I'm struggling with a canvas begun a few days before my indisposition. A reaper, the study is all yellow, terribly thickly impasted, but the subject was beautiful and simple. I then saw in this reaper – a vague figure struggling like a devil in the full heat of the day to reach the end of his toil – I then saw the image of death in it, in this sense that humanity would be the wheat being reaped. So if you like it's the opposite of that Sower I tried before. But in this death [there is] nothing sad, it takes place in broad daylight with a sun that floods everything with a light of fine gold. Good, here I am again, however I'm not letting go, and I'm trying again on a new canvas.[10][12]

Before writing the letter quoted above, the artist had suffered a severe mental breakdown. In July 1889, he was confined in the asylum for six weeks and was only permitted to paint again in late August.[13] While writing the 4–5 September letter, he touched up the first painting, which he described as a "study", and began working on a new version.[10][12]

Second painting (F618), 4–5 September 1889, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands[6]

Van Gogh appears to have completed the second painting in a single day and taking breaks to write the letter on 4–5 September 1889.[10] In a later part of the letter, he announces: "Phew – the reaper is finished, I think it will be one that you'll place in your home".[12][14]

He initially preferred this version over the earlier study.[15] He described it as:

[A]n image of death as the great Book of Nature speaks to us about it – but what I sought is the "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.[12][15]

The "almost smiling" is a reference to an expression used by Théophile Silvestre to describe the death of Eugène Delacroix.[16][17] Silvestre's eulogy of Delacroix had made an impression on Van Gogh according to a letter he wrote in 15 August 1885 to the painter Anthon van Rappard.[18] Van Gogh also quoted the eulogy in other letters.[19]

There were significant differences between this second painting and version started earlier in the summer. This version was less yellow, with a sky that is more greenish in color,[14] and the Sun was more conical and higher in the sky. He added a small tree near the left edge of the painting along the hills in the background and removed the pile of sheaves from the foreground.[15] Van Gogh eventually came to believe the original painting created from nature was better than the replica[20] which he had intended as "the final painting".[12] The second painting, at 73.2 cm × 92.7 cm (28.8 in × 36.5 in), was almost the same size as the first.[10][21] Both the first and second version of the painting were still drying on 19 September 1889 and he was not able to include them in the batch he shipped to Theo on that date. The paintings were eventually included in the batch he sent on 28 September,[22] by which time he had completed a third version of the painting.[12]

Third painting (F619), late September 1889, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany[23]

In late September 1889, Van Gogh painted reduced versions of several of his earlier works, including a replica of the Reaper similar to the one he made earlier that month, smaller versions of Wheat Field with Cypresses and Bedroom in Arles, and what he called "a little portrait of me", Self-Portrait Without Beard.[2][24] In particular, he wrote on 6 September 1889: "I really want to redo the reaper one more time for Mother, if not I'll make her another painting for her birthday".[12][25] This third version of the painting, also known as The Wheatfield behind Saint Paul's Hospital with a Reaper, or La moisson, 'the harvest',[26] was smaller at 59.5 cm × 72.5 cm (23.4 in × 28.5 in).[2][27] The painting was completed and drying by 28 September[12] and, in December 1889, was sent to Theo along with several other small replicas.[3]

The three paintings to approximate scale