Van Gogh's 'The Fields' Will Be Auctioned In November

LONDON (AP) _ One of Vincent van Gogh's final landscapes, ``The Fields,'' will be auctioned in New York in November, a British newspaper reported Saturday. <br/><br/>The painting will go display

Saturday, September 22nd 2007, 3:27 pm

By: News On 6

LONDON (AP) _ One of Vincent van Gogh's final landscapes, ``The Fields,'' will be auctioned in New York in November, a British newspaper reported Saturday.

The painting will go display at Sotheby's auction house in London on Oct. 7 and will be sold in New York a month later with an estimated price of $34 million, The Independent reported.

Officials at Sotheby's in London were not immediately available to confirm the report on Saturday.

Van Gogh is believed to have finished the painting, which depicts wheat fields swaying in the breeze under a blue sky, weeks before he died in a town near Paris on July 29, 1890, at the age of 37. He died two days after going to a field and shooting himself in the chest.

In a letter the artist wrote to his brother, Theo van Gogh, on July 10, 1890, he described having just painted what experts believe to be ``The Fields,'' along with two other works, according to the report.

``They are vast fields of wheat under troubled skies, and I did not need to go out of my way to try to express sadness and extreme loneliness ... I almost think that these canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words, the health and restorative forces that I see in the country,'' van Gogh wrote.

The painting was sold by Theo van Gogh's widow in 1907 and has since remained in private hands.