A van Gogh "Landscape of Extreme Simplicity"

The Getty Museum is showing van Gogh's Landscape from Saint-Rémy, a work created the same year as Irises (1889). Owned by the National Gallery of Denmark, but normally displayed at the Ny Carlsberg Glypotek, it's in L.A. for technical examination at the Getty Museum's Paintings Conservation department.

In a letter to his brother Theo, the artist described the subject as "a field of wheat, ravaged and knocked to the ground after a storm. A boundary wall and beyond, gray foliage of a few olive trees, huts and hills. Finally, at the top of the painting a large white and gray cloud swamped by the azure. It's a landscape of extreme simplicity."