The Harvest

This large harvest picture, more than a metre across and dated 1908, shows people at work. The Belvedere notes that it draws its life from the harmony of its colours and an ordered layout more than from the toil or the dignity of labour. Women with sheaves bound onto their backs file across the stubble. A man in a white shirt bends over a bundle, and further off a cart piled high with sheaves heads toward a small bridge over a bright blue channel. Stooks stand in loose rows as far as a low farmhouse and a line of distant hills. The brushwork is broad, the palette held mostly to straw yellow and blue. Nearly the whole sky is pale grey, with one small cloud in it. The signature sits low in the corner, B. Koller.