Harvest Time, by George Vicat Cole (1833-1893). 1860. Oil on canvas. H 93 x W 149 cm. Credit: @ Bristol Culture: Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. Accession no. K162; a gift from Arthur Robinson, 1909. Reproduced here by kind permission of the gallery.
Like so many London-based artists, Vicat Cole enjoyed visiting the Surrey Hills, spending the summers of 1857-1859 in the Surrey village of Albury, where his biographer and brother-in-law, Robert Chignell, first met him. Chignell describes the area as "an ideal spot, which gathers round itself all that is sweet and fair in English inland scenery," and gives an idyllic picture of his visit to him there: "The memory of that visit is like a happy dream. The artist would sit painting under his white umbrella; his wife, with her work perhaps, near by in the shade; whilst I lay watching his brush, or at times reading to him as he worked. Often, as the details of some plant or feathery grass took shape on the canvas, I would get up to look, in doubt whether they were actually visible, or creations of his fancy" (I: 7).
Vicat Cole would return to Albury again and again, but these early visits were especially important for his career. Harvest Time, with its bucolic view of farmhands at work in a dip of the hills, gathering in the golden grain, is rich with the sense of promise fulfilled. One young man has drawn aside to take something from a little girl, while her mother looks on, holding a bonneted infant in her lap. Although the harvest is still in process, the scene brings to mind lines from Henry Alford's well-known hymn, "Harvest" (1844): "All is safely gathered in ... Free from sorrow, free from sin." This popular painting was Vicat Cole's break-through work, winning the silver medal of the Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in 1860. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Link to related material
Bibliography
Chignell, Robert. The Life and Paintings of Vicat Cole RA. Vol. I. 3 vols. London: Cassell, 1896. Internet Archive, digitised from copies in the Getty Research Institute. Web. 30 September 2022.
Harvest Time. Art UK. Web. 30 September 2022.
Created 30 September 2022