Wheatfield with Crows is a July 1890 painting by Vincent van Gogh. It is commonly but mistakenly believed that this was Van Gogh's last painting, a misunderstanding fed by "seeing the dramatic, cloudy sky filled with crows and the cut-off path as obvious portents of his coming end".[1]
A usual interpretation of this painting is that it shows Van Gogh's troubled state of mind with a dark, forbidding sky, the indecision of three paths going in different directions and the black crows overhead being signs of foreboding or even death. The artist wrote that he had made three paintings in Auvers of large fields of wheat under troubled skies.
Van Gogh committed suicide the month he painted this picture. It is generally agreed that he went for a walk in the fields on the evening of July 27, 1890, and shot himself with a revolver, then made his way back home. He survived for three days before he died with his brother Theo at his side.
This painting is in the collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Recently, the painting was featured in an episode of the series Simon Schama's Power of Art, and was the inspiration for the fifth segment of Akira Kurosawa's film Dreams. The painting is also invoked in a scene in the 1990 film Vincent & Theo, when Vincent (Tim Roth) commits suicide.
