Though its title is decidedly autumnal, Vincent van Gogh painted The Harvest on a fine French summer day in 1888. The painting was one of his proudest achievements, the speed of its completion affirming for him the rightness of the work; his satisfaction lay not only in what he had captured about quotidien peasant life in Arles, but in the pleasure he got from the process itself. He wrote to his brother Theo, “the canvas absolutely kills all the rest…if…
