Art! Art! Art! › Works

Harvest at La Crau, with Montmajour in the Background

Vincent van Gogh, 1888

Vincent van Gogh's Harvest at La Crau, with Montmajour in the Background (1888) shows a wide farming plain in Provence during harvest time, with a low ridge and a ruined abbey on the horizon. The painting is in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum. It rewards slow looking, because small figures, carts and haystacks are scattered across a field of yellows and greens.

Where to see it

Harvest at La Crau, with Montmajour in the Background is held by the Van Gogh Museum, which is also its listed location. Works in any collection can be moved, rehung or lent, so check the Van Gogh Museum's official website for current display status, opening hours and ticketing before you plan your visit.

What to look for in person

A landscape built in bands

Stand back first and notice how the picture is organised in horizontal layers. The foreground fields give way to a busy middle zone of farm activity, then to a distant line of hills and a narrow strip of sky set high in the composition. This high horizon lets the plain fill most of the canvas, so your eye travels across the land rather than up into the sky. The 73 by 92 centimetre format suits this wide, panoramic reading of the scene.

Small signs of the harvest

Move closer and look for the details of work in progress. Van Gogh placed a cart near the centre, along with haystacks, farm buildings, fences and small figures who appear busy with the harvest. None of these elements dominates; instead they are spread across the fields, giving a sense of a whole community at work across the plain. Try tracing a path from the foreground into the distance and counting the different activities you can find along the way.

Colour and brushwork

The painting is dominated by warm yellows and ochres for the ripening fields, set against greens, touches of blue and the cool tones of the distant hills and sky. Look at how the brushstrokes change from area to area: short marks, longer strokes and flatter patches each describe a different kind of field or surface. Seen up close, these marks become a patchwork of colour; from a few steps back, they resolve into a coherent, sunlit landscape.

About the painting

Vincent van Gogh painted Harvest at La Crau, with Montmajour in the Background in 1888, the year he settled in Arles in the south of France. Soon after arriving, he became absorbed by the flat, open countryside around the town, known as La Crau, and by the bright light of Provence, which he felt was very different from the northern landscapes he knew. The title points to two places: the plain of La Crau, where the harvest is taking place, and Montmajour, a hill topped by the ruins of an old abbey, which can be found along the horizon. Van Gogh walked in this area and made a number of drawings and paintings of the surrounding landscape during this period. In front of the painting, it helps to think of it as a portrait of a place rather than of people. The farm workers are small and anonymous, while the land itself, divided into fields of different colours and textures, is the real subject. The composition invites you to scan the scene from side to side and from front to back, picking out carts, stacks and buildings as you go. For visitors who know Van Gogh mainly through his sunflowers or night skies, this work offers a quieter view of his time in Arles: careful observation of an ordinary working landscape, translated into strong colour and varied brushwork. Allow time to view it both from a distance, to take in the overall structure, and up close, to see how individual strokes of paint build the fields, the hills and the sky.

Key facts

More by Vincent van Gogh

• Café Terrace at Night — Kröller-Müller Museum
• White House at Night
• The siesta (after Millet) — Musée d'Orsay
• The Church at Auvers — Musée d'Orsay
• Portrait of Père Tanguy
• Starry Night Over the Rhône — Musée d'Orsay
• The Potato Eaters — Van Gogh Museum
• The Red Vineyard
• The Yellow House — Van Gogh Museum
• Agostina Segatori Sitting in the Café du Tambourin — Van Gogh Museum
• Irises — J. Paul Getty Museum
• Langlois Bridge at Arles with Women Washing, The — Kröller-Müller Museum

Sources

• Wikidata Q4892867
• www.vangoghmuseum.nl