Harvest, the season of the gathering of crops. The word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon haerfest (“autumn”) or the Old High German herbist. Harvest has been a season of rejoicing from the remotest times. (Britannica – https://www.britannica.com/topic/harvest)
Artists have captured the annual harvest period, so important and celebrated culturally and socially, especially in our earlier times. There is a golden light we all know from those lovely autumnal days that must have been and still is, enticing for painters with the many changing colours of nature. It is joyous and melancholic all at the same time. The end of summer days and the end of the growth of the crops, but also a time to reap the harvest to provide food through the coming winter and into Spring.
‘As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colors enough to paint the beautiful things I see.’ Vincent Van Gogh
Let this gallery of paintings by famous artists accompany you to set the mood of crisp morning and afternoon walks in the golden glow of sun and leaves crunching underfoot while the crops are being harvested in fields nearby. Then read the lovely poem below by James B. Kenyon.
Jean-Francois Millet (French school), The Gleaners / Des glaneuses, 1857, Oil on canvas (83 x 110 cm) Paris, Musee d’Orsay. Photo: Photo12/Universal Images Group 
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch school) The Harvest, June 1888, Oil on canvas (73.4 x 91.8 cm) Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum. Photo: Photo12/Universal Images Group 
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch school) Peasant Woman Binding Sheaves (after Millet), September 1889, Oil on canvas (43.2 x 33.2 cm) Amsterdam, Van Gogh museum. Photo: Photo12/Universal Images Group 
Haystacks by Claude Monet, 1891. Photo: PicturesNow/Universal Images group 
Painting, Charles Clair (1860-1930) French school, Harvests La Moisson London, Waterhouse and Dodd. Photo: Photo12/Universal Images Group 
Painting, Adolf Muller (1853-1914) German school. Harvest Time on the Estate. Photo: Photo12/Universal Images Group 
Painting, Henry H. Parker (1853-1930) English school Harvest Time near Littlehampton, Sussex, England 19th century. London, Burlington Fine Paintings. Photo: Photo12/Universal Images Group 
The Grape Harvest. 1884. Oil on canvas. 99 x 82 5/8 in. (251.5 x 209.9 cm). Leon-Augustin Lhermitte (French. Mont Saint-Pere 1844–1925 Paris). Photo: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group 
Paying the Harvesters, 1882. Artist: Leon-Augustin Lhermitte. Photo: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group 
Harvest at Mont Foucault’, 1876. Artist: Camille Pissarro. Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist painter. Photo: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group 
The Harvest, Pontoise (La R-colte, Pontoise), 1881, Oil on canvas, Camille Pissarro (French, Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas 1830-1903 Paris) Photo: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group 
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890). Dutch post-impressionist painter. The Harvesters, 1888. Oil on canvas (73 x 54 cm). Rodin Museum, Paris, France. Photo: PHAS/Universal Images Group 
Apple Gathering, Jerome Thompson, American, 1814-1886, Oil on canvas, 1856. Photo: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group 
The First Harvest in the Wilderness, Asher B. Durand, American, 1796-1886, Oil on canvas, 1855. Photo: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group 
The Hay Harvest, Johannes Lingelbach (1622-1674). Photo: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group 
The Valleys Stand Thick With Corn, 1865, Richard Redgrave (d. 1888). Photo: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group 
Haytime Hamstead Mill Handsworth, Staffordshire, 1850-1908 John Joseph Hughes, Landscape, Oil Painting. Photo: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group 
The mowers, a painting of serfs by Grigory Miasoyedov, 1887. Photo: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group 
Haystacks: Autumn, circa 1874, Oil on canvas, Jean-Francois Millet (French, Gruchy 1814 – 1875 Barbizon). Photo: Sepia Times/Universal Images Group
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