 Intending to paint a pure sulfur yellow, he wrote to Émile Bernard that he had taken up the "devil of a question of yellow".He explained to his brother Theo, "I see in this reaper – an undefined figure, struggling in the intense heat like the devil to finish his work – I see him as an image of death in the sense that the humans are the corn that is being cut down.So it is, if you will, the opposite of the sowing that I tried earlier.