The Harvester by Bouguereau

The Harvester by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1868, is an oil on canvas painting of a young farm girl in skirt, white blouse and red cap smiling warmly at the broad, sunny wheat fields that she is harvesting. She holds a large copper cistern resting on the edge of a water well. A group of fellow farmers relax and play music in the harvested field nearby. Bouguereau paints a classical, realistic vision of the dignity and goodness of simple labour. William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825 - 1905) was a French painter who trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, and the Villa Medici in Rome. He exhibited with great success in the French Salon and became one of most renowned and wealthy artists of his era. Bouguereau worked in the French Academic tradition, a school of late 19th century modern painters who concentrated on the human figure and classical subjects in highly polished works of optical realism. His main interest was the female figure, usually rendered in classical, finely drawn contours, in subjects that were often sentimental. Bouguereau's reputation diminished greatly in the 20th century with the rise of modern art, but interest in his traditional figurative paintings has surged again in recent years.