Treading out the Corn. Lower pool of Gihon, Jerusalem, May, 1862 [Treading Corn] . 1864. Oil on panel. 30 x 42 inches (76.2 x 106.6 cm). Collection of the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead, accession no. BIKGM:123. Image courtesy of the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, reproduced via Art UK for purposes of non-commercial academic research. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Webb exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1864, no. 216, obviously based on studies done on the spot in May 1862 during his visit to Jerusalem. The Gihon Spring is located outside the city walls of Jerusalem on the west bank of the Kidron Valley and was the principal source of water for Jerusalem in biblical times and into the Victorian period. The water reached the city via tunnels. The lower Pool of Gihon was located in the Valley of Hinnom. This pool is now referred to as the Sultan Pool (Birket es-Sultan) but was known as the Lower Pool of Gihon in Victorian times.
In a letter of July 2, 1854 the artist Thomas Seddon gave details about the threshing process he witnessed during his time in Jerusalem:
Just under where I am the harvesting operations are going on all day long, as it is their principal threshing-floor; all the wheat is collected there, being brought either on men's heads, or on donkeys. The proprietor places his own in a heap by itself, and men are appointed by the village to guard it by day and night. The threshing is still more rude than in Egypt, and a very slow process. They drive cattle and donkeys over it in a circle, which reduces it into powder, and then they throw it up in the air in the morning and afternoon breeze, to blow away the chaff. [103]
This information supports the threshing process as shown in Webb's Treading Corn. A team of three oxen are shown walking in a circle treading the harvested wheat sheaves and overseen by an elderly worker wearing a turban. A younger man in a red fez in the midground with his two donkeys is bringing additional wheat sheaves to be threshed. In the left foreground are two winnowing baskets used to separate the wheat from chaff while at the same time removing dust and dirt. The unprocessed grain is placed in the winnowing basket which is then lifted and shaken to separate out the lighter particles, a process that will be aided if there is concurrently a light wind. A separated pile of wheat is to the left of the baskets. A pitchfork for spreading out the wheat sheaves can be seen in the right foreground. The background shows that the threshing is carried out in a valley with cliffs and man-made terraces in the background. Prominent clumps of prickly pear cactus can be seen on the hillside.
When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1864, the Illustrated London News was one of the few periodicals to review it and then not extensively: "W. J. Webb, a young artist from whom much may be expected, has made a very considerable advance during the year … in his Oxen Treading out the Corn. Lower pool of Gihon, Jerusalem, May, 1862 (216), with the asses and camels employed in conveying the wheat and corn, with the bushes of eccentrically-growing prickly pears and the pomegranate in flower" (479). The Saturday Review also mentioned the work, but only in passing (624).
The German Orientalist painter Carl Haag, who spent most of his working life in England, painted a watercolour of The Valley and the lower Pool of Gihon, Jerusalem in 1859.
Bibliography
"Fine Arts. Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News XLIV (14 May 1864): 479.
"The Royal Academy of 1864." The Saturday Review XVI (21 May 1864): 624-25.
Seddon, John Pollard. Memoir and Letters of the Late Thomas Seddon, Artist. London: John Nisbet and Co., 1858.
Treading Corn. Art UK. Web. 1 June 2025.
Created 1 June 2025