The artwork “Harvest” by Charles-Francois Daubigny, created in 1851, is an oil on canvas that embodies the Realism art movement. The painting measures 196 by 135 centimeters and falls under the genre of landscape. It currently resides in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and its creation took place in France.
The artwork portrays a serene rural landscape capturing the essence of the harvest season. The expansive scene is set under a vast sky, which dominates the upper portion of the canvas with its subtle variations of light and cloud formations, creating a sense of openness and tranquility. Below, the land stretches out in an array of golden and earthen tones, suggestive of the ripened crops and tilled soil of the farmland. In the foreground, a figure can be seen, adding a human element to the composition and accentuating the theme of agricultural labor. The field is dotted with hay bales and clusters of laborers and livestock, further emphasizing the productive yet peaceful nature of the harvest time. The attention to detail in the rendering of the natural elements and the activity of the figures is characteristic of the Realist preference for depicting the truth of everyday life. The artwork’s gentle color palette and the diffusion of light capture the delicate interplay between sky and land, a hallmark of Daubigny’s contributions to landscape painting.
