The grim reaper has been perhaps the symbol most concretely associated with death since the idea of the personage first emerged in the middle ages. It is further evidence of Van Gogh’s obsession with death that he chose to copy a print he had of a reaper by Millet, creating Reaper with Sickle (After Millet) in September of 1889. In keeping with the aforementioned works, all of which incorporate symbols and ideas of death in a depiction of the outdoors, Van Gogh chose to depict an outdoor image of death, with the reaper actively cutting the wheat stalks. Vincent wrote to Theo that it was “an image of death as the great book of nature speaks of it� (Letter 604). He acknowledges, of course, that the painting is an “image of death� but goes further to draw a connection between death and nature, which is in fitting with the ubiquity of death in his scenes of nature and the outdoors.