Asceticism and the Joy of Living

By 1865 Frank Buchser had spent years painting his way around Spain and Morocco, and this wide canvas was built to be his statement piece for the Paris art world. He set it in a Swiss high summer, up on a plateau with the Alps behind, at the peak of the harvest: workers cut wheat and load the dry stalks onto horse-drawn wagons. Into that ordinary working day he sent two opposite processions. Along the road moves a file of Franciscan monks, heads down in prayer. Coming the other way, a young couple rides out together, unhurried and wrapped up in each other. Buchser meant the two to read as a choice, the old contrast between a life of asceticism and the joy of living, the sort of allegory Paris liked to stage as the Judgment of Paris. He rated the picture among his best and sent it to the Paris Salon of 1866 and to the World's Fair there the next year. Off to the side, two girls rest by the road with flowers in their hair, and one of them has turned to watch a young monk as he walks past.