Focusing on the Periods of this artwork, analyze the Wheat harvest series about the Auvers-sur-Oise.
Wheat harvest series Van Gogh painted thirteen large canvases of horizontal landscapes of the wheat harvest that occurs in the region from the middle to late July. The series began with Wheat Field under Cloudy Sky then Wheatfield with Crows was painted when the crop was on the verge of harvest.  Sheaves of Wheat painted after the harvest and concluding with Field with Haystacks (private collection).
Green Wheat Fields or Field with Green Wheat was made in May.
Wheat Field at Auvers with White House was made in June.  The painting is mainly a large green field of wheat.  In the background is a white house behind a wall and a tree.The outlying fields of Auvers, setting for Wheat Fields after the Rain (The Plain of Auvers), form a "zig-zag, patchwork pattern," of yellows, blues, and greens. In the last letter that Van Gogh wrote to his mother he described being very calm, something needed for this work, an "immense plain with wheat fields up as far as the hills, boundless as the ocean, delicate yellow, delicate soft green, the delicate purple of a tilled and weeded piece of ground, with the regular speckle of the green of flowering potato plants, everything under a sky of delicate tones of blue, white, pink and violet." This painting was also called Wheat Fields at Auvers Under Clouded Sky.			
			
		
		
			
			
		
Van Gogh described Ears of Wheat to painter and friend Paul Gauguin as "nothing more than ears of wheat, green-blue stalks long, ribbon-like leaves, under a sheen of green & pink; ears of wheat, yellowing slightly, with an edge made pale pink by the dusty manner of flowering; at the bottom, a pink bindweed winding round a stalk. I would like to paint portraits against a background that is so lively and yet so still."  The painting depicts "the soft rustle of the ears of grain swaying back and forth in the wind."  He used the motif as the background to a portrait.
The Fields was painted in July and held in a private collection.
An animated Wheatfield with Cornflowers shows the effect of a gust of wind that ripples through the yellow stalks, seeming to "overflow" into the blue background.  The heads of a few stalks of wheat seem to have detached themselves, diving into the blue of the hills in the background.			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
Wheat Fields near Auvers, 1890, owned by Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna was also described by van Gogh as a landscape of the vast wheat fields after a rain.Van Gogh brings the spectator directly into Sheaves of Wheat by filling the picture plane with eight sheaves of wheat, as if seeing it from a worker's perspective. The sheaves, bathed in yellow light, appear to be recently cut.  For contrast, Van Gogh uses the complementary, vivid lavender for shadows and earth in the nearby field.			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
In van Gogh's Wheatfields Under Thunderclouds, also called Wheat Fields Under Clouded Sky,  landscape he depicts the loneliness of the countryside and the degree to which it was "healthy and heartening."
The Van Gogh Museum's Wheatfield with Crows was made in July 1890, in the last weeks of Van Gogh's life, many have claimed it was his last work.  Others have claimed Tree Roots was his last painting.  Wheatfield with Crows, made on an elongated canvas, depicts a dramatic cloudy sky filled with crows over a wheat field. The wind-swept wheat field fills two thirds of the canvas.  An empty path pulls the audience into the painting.  Jules Michelet, one of Van Gogh's favorite authors, wrote of the crow: "They interest themselves in everything, and observe everything.  The ancients, who lived far more completely than ourselves in and with nature, found it no small profit to follow, in a hundred obscure things where human experience as yet affords no light, the directions so prudent and sage a bird."  Of making the painting Van Gogh wrote that he did not have a hard time depicting the sadness and emptiness of the painting, which was powerfully offset by the restorative nature of the countryside. Erickson 1998, pp. 103, 148, cautious of attributing stylistic changes in his work to mental illness, finds the painting expresses both the sorrow and the sense of his life coming to an end. The crows, used by Van Gogh as symbol of death and rebirth or resurrection, visually draw the spectator into the painting.  The road, in contrasting colors of red and green, is thought to be a metaphor for a sermon he gave based on Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress where the pilgrim is sorrowful that the road is so long, yet rejoicing because the Eternal City waits at the journey's end.Erickson 1998, p. 162
Wheat Stack Under Clouded Sky also called Haystack under a Rainy Sky, was made July 1890, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands (F563).			
			
		
		
			
			
		
		
			
			
		
Field with Stacks of Grain, at Beyeler Foundation, Riehen, Switzerland (F809) is one of van Gogh's last paintings, is both more rigid and at the same time more abstract than other paintings of this series, such as Wheatfield with Cornflowers. Two large stacks of wheat fill the painting like "abandoned buildings," seeming to cut off the sky.
Wheat Fields with Auvers in the Background also painted in July is part of the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire collection in Geneva (F801).
Wheatfield with Crows Beyeler Foundation Tree Roots Otterlo Wheatfields Under Thunderclouds Kröller-Müller Museum The Pilgrim's Progress Paul Gauguin Österreichische Galerie Belvedere Wheat Switzerland Van Gogh Museum Rain Netherlands