Field with Poppies

Spring and summer 1888. Arles. This is probably the happiest Van Gogh ever got. He had left grey Paris behind. The light was insane. He was eating better. Painting outside every single day. Gauguin was about to come visit. He had a house. A yellow one. He was decorating it with his own paintings like a kid getting ready for a friend to sleep over. He painted over 200 works in Arles. Two hundred. In about a year. But these first months before everything fell apart were the peak. You can feel it in this one. There's no tension here. Just a guy standing in a field full of poppies thinking this might actually work out. It didn't. But for a few months it really looked like it would.