Installation: ‘A Wheatfield, with Cypresses’

In September 1889, while a patient at the St. Remy mental asylum near Arles, France, Vincent Van Gogh painted three landscapes of a wheat field with tall, dark, undulating cypresses. The trees, he wrote in a letter to his brother, were “as beautiful of line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk.” Now London’s National Gallery, home to one of the landscape paintings, is displaying a giant botanical replica of the work. Partnering with General Electric’s Ecomagination program—which explores sustainable solutions through clean technology—the gallery commissioned a living facsimile of A Wheatfield, with Cypresses. Horticultural design specialists ANS installed the wall on the gallery’s west side, facing Trafalgar Square, using 8,000 plants of 26 varieties. The work will remain on display through the end of October. nationalgallery.org.uk