Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Wheatfield

Wheatfield – ripe corn in short cream and yellow strokes

Wheatfield is an oil painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, made in 1879. The original measures 50.5 x 61.0 cm, is catalogued as CTB.1961.11 and belongs to the Carmen Thyssen Collection, shown at the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. Our oil painting on canvas Wheatfield is worked by hand in oil on canvas, in eight sizes from 70 x 60 to 150 x 120 cm.

The signature at the lower right reads Renoir. 79, which confirms the museum’s date on its own. The picture is simple in the best sense: no scene, no story, just a field at the end of summer and the light standing over it.

Two thirds of the canvas beneath the sky

The lower two thirds of the canvas are filled with ripe corn, set down in short strokes of cream, yellow and pale rose, with green blades still showing through at the front. A path runs into the field at the centre. At the left a group of trees in blue-green and grey closes the edge; behind the field the ground rises into low hills, and at the right lies a dark red-brown band of worked earth. The sky is pale and clouded, brushed in broadly. There are no figures.

Why hand-painted, not a print

Our version is not a print. The ears of corn are made of hundreds of short, separate strokes laid side by side in shifting directions, and it is that density which gives the field its movement. A hand-painted canvas keeps that difference in the way the paint sits, which printed paper cannot imitate.

In the room

The subject is warm, gold and green and stays alive even on a wall that gets little light, so it repays hanging in a living room, a dining room or a bedroom. For an average wall we propose 80 x 65 cm, for a large one 120 x 100 cm; on a broad wall 150 x 120 cm works, with 130 x 110 cm as the step before. Under 70 x 60 cm the short strokes in the corn merge and the field becomes an even yellow area, without the movement that carries it.

What you receive

We paint the canvas to order, by hand and for you alone, so every copy is made on its own; the canvas is usually painted and dried within three to four weeks. If you prefer, we will paint it in a size that is not on the list. Before despatch we send you a photograph of the finished canvas for your approval, and only then does the painting go out. Wheatfield arrives stretched on a wooden frame and ready to hang, wrapped in protective film and in rigid packaging, with no further stretching or finishing needed.

• Subject: ripe wheatfield under an open sky, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
• Technique: hand-painted oil painting on canvas, stretched on a wooden frame
• Sizes: 8 sizes, from 70 x 60 cm to 150 x 120 cm, another size on request
• Detail worth knowing: the corn is painted in short strokes of cream, yellow and pale pink – it is the pink that gives the field its warmth back

See also:

• Woman with a Parasol in a Garden
• The Piazza San Marco, Venice
• Luncheon of the Boating Party