This painting is significant for art history because it challenged the conventions of landscape painting. It is a representation of a natural scene, but nature itself isn't the real background for the painting. The background is the painter's personality and inner psychological struggle. The wheatfield is strikingly yellow, against the deep blue color of the sky, leaving an impression of uneasiness and agitation, rather than serenity. The scene is an epitome of deep, unresolved mental anxiety, from which there is no way out. The middle road, central to the painting's composition, leads nowhere.
