Hallowed Harvests

Like the seasons, artistic expression of agrarian experience has varied since ancient and medieval times. For three millennia the Old Testament Book of Ruth has been synonymous with the abiding theme of divine deliverance associated with gleaning. Medieval fatalism gave way to more colorful renderings of joyful communal harvest and other farming endeavors. Still greater appreciation of peasant ways emerged during the Renaissance and was reflected in new styles of art and literature. Lavish Baroque canvases and detailed drawings followed to show lively scenes with mowers, gleaners, and carters working as one. The pantheon of eminent national artists and authors who created masterpieces on agrarian themes includes some of the greatest names in art and literature. For rich or poor in any age, survival has come from what is grown in the good earth. The duties of sowing and harvesting, therefore, have long had aesthetic connotations reflected in a variety of creative forms explored in these pages. For more, Scheuerman takes readers up to the present day with his follow-up book Harvest Hands, Reapers and Threshers in American and Modern European Art and Literature.