Reapers Resting in a Wheat Field

Reapers Resting in a Wheat Field. John Singer Sargent. 1885. Oil on canvas, 40.96 x 60.96 cm (16 1/8 x 24 inches). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (50.130.14), Gift of Mrs. Francis Ormond, 1950. Click on image to enlarge it.

Commentary on the museum website

Sargent spent the summer and fall of 1885 in Broadway, a village in the English Cotswolds popular with many English and American artists and writers. This fluidly painted landscape conveys the pleasures of his rural idyll. The bright palette reflects the warmth of the midday sun, while Sargent’s sickle-shaped brushstrokes and impressionist technique evoke the reapers’ tools and labor. — George P. Landow]


Last modified 2 June 2016