Courtesy of www.VincentVanGogh.org

This drawing was created in July 1888 when he was staying in the small town of Arles in the South of France. He made a series of drawing around the hill of Montmajour.

Van Gogh described this drawing at length to his friend and fellow artist Émile Bernard:

an enormous stretch of flat country, a bird's eye view of it seen from the top of a hill - vineyards and fields of newly reaped wheat. All this multiplied in endless repetition, stretching away towards the horizon like the surface of a sea, bordered by the little hills of the Crau. It does not have a Japanese look, and yet it is the most Japanese thing I have done: a microscopic figure of a laborer, a little train running across the wheat field is all the animation there is in it".