Hanging alongside Sunflowers is another Van Goch painting, A Wheatfield with Cypresses.

Anyone who knows a little bit about art (but is not a true student of it) often think of paintings in terms of a particular subject being painted by a particular painter; "Oh, that's the X which was painted by Y". In reality, painters often do multiple incarnations of a single subject. And this is even more true of an artist like Van Gogh, who suffered from mental illness and was therefore prone to a degree of obsessiveness. Indeed, the inspiration for this subject came from the time when Van Gogh was a voluntary patient at a mental asylum between 1889 and 1890. The scene was a view from near the asylum.

This one was painted in September 1889. Another almost identical one (painted in July of the same year) is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Of the former, Vincent wrote to his brother saying "I have a canvas of cypresses with some ears of wheat, some poppies, a blue sky like a piece of Scotch plaid; the former painted with a thick impasto like the Monticelli's, and the wheat field in the sun, which represents the extreme heat, very thick too."

I do indeed like this painting and I think it achieves what Van Gogh set out to. I can indeed feel the presence of summer here, and can imagine what it would like to be in that field at that time.