A Tortured Mind: van Gogh's Grapple with Death
The Reaper
Vincent incorporated the issue of hope in his landscapes most clearly in the last few years of his life, during his stays in Saint-Remy and in Auvers. For instance, his work The Reaper, painted during his time at an asylum in Saint-Remy in September of 1889, presents an oddly comforting view of a difficult subject. It is a bright picture of a worker trudging through a golden yellow field in his attempts to clear the wheat, but it portrays more than just a worker. Rather, as van Gogh wrote to Theo, “I see in him the image of death, in the sense that humanity might be the wheat he is reaping…but there’s nothing sad in this death” (Letter 604, van Gogh). This reaping is not a sad occurrence, as he wrote, because there is nothing to fear. For van Gogh, death did not represent the horrific end with which we often associate it, as his correspondence with his brother shows:
Why, I ask myself, shouldn’t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France? Just as we take the train to get to Tarascon or Rouen, we take death to reach a star…So to me it seems possible that cholera, gravel, tuberculosis and cancer are the celestial means of locomotion, just as steamboats, buses, railways are the terrestrial means. To die quietly of old age would be to go there on foot. (Letter 506, van Gogh)
In essence, as he expresses in this passage, for Vincent death was simply the means of transportation to the heavens, and a quick end was simply a quicker means of transportation. As such, in The Reaper, the field is bright, the sky is clear, and the sun is shining above. The reaper of death is cutting down humanity as he passes through, but it is nothing to fear. And indeed, in the center of the sky lies the sun, a common Christian symbol for God, Sund tells us, (Mashek 241) and here a beacon of comfort. It is the source of the calm, golden colors, and its dominant presence puts the land at ease and watches over the events below. In painting it over what might otherwise be a frightening scene, van Gogh brings a deep sense of comfort to the sky and shows us that we do not have to fear death. His connection lets him see death in a different light, a light provided by the sun in the sky in The Reaper.