Harvest Time (Mowers)

Harvest Time (Mowers) (Russian: Страдная пора (Косцы)) is a painting by Russian artist Grigoriy Myasoedov (1834–1911), completed in 1887. It is kept in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg (Inventory Zh-6899). The size is 164 × 282 cm (according to other data, 179 × 275 cm). The work, combining elements of domestic genre and landscape, is devoted to the theme of peasant labor during the harvest. The painting was originally known under the title Harvest Time; later, the names Harvest and Croppers were also used. Modern literature usually uses the double title, Harvest Time (Mowers) or Harvest Time. Mowers. The canvas was presented at the 15th exhibition of the Association of Travelling Art Exhibitions (Peredvizhniki), which opened in February 1887 in St. Petersburg. Right from the exposition, the painting was purchased by Tsar Alexander III. For a long time, Harvest Time was in the Gatchina Palace. In the summer of 1941, in the wake of the German invasion of the USSR, the collection of paintings from the Gatchina Palace was evacuated to Sarapul. After the war, the paintings were first in Pushkin, and then in Pavlovsk. In 1959, the canvas Harvest Time (Moers) was transferred to the State Russian Museum. In a review article dedicated to the 15th Travelling Exhibition, art critic Vladimir Stasov called Harvest Time one of the most excellent paintings by Myasoedov and noted that it is full of "poetry, light feeling, something healthy and solemn". Art historian Dmitry Sarabianov wrote that in this work Myasoedov managed to achieve "monumental construction of the canvas", which corresponds to the general idea and shows "the beauty of the labor upsurge in the season of labor". According to art historian Irina Shuvalova, in this painting, for the first time in Russian painting, the "greatness and beauty of peasant labor and, most importantly, its powerful creative beginning" is so clearly shown.

History

Previous events and work on the painting

In 1853-1862, Grigoriy Myasoedov studied at the Academy of Arts in the class of history painting. In 1862, for his painting The Escape of Grigoriy Otrepiev from the Tavern on the Lithuanian Border (now in the National Pushkin Museum), Myasoedov was awarded a large gold medal of the Academy of Arts. Along with this award, he received the title of class artist of the 1st category, as well as the right to a pensioner's trip abroad. In 1863-1866 and 1867-1869, the artist worked in Italy, France, and Spain, and also visited Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland. In March 1869, Myasoedov returned to Russia. In the following years, he lived and worked in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tula, Kharkov, and Poltava provinces, as well as in the Crimea. In 1870, for the painting Spells, he received the title of academician of historical painting. Myasoedov was one of the founders of the Society of Travelling Art Exhibitions (Peredvizhniki), established in 1870, whose first exhibition opened in November 1871 in St. Petersburg. After that, all of Myasoedov's major works were exhibited at traveling exhibitions — Zemstvo Dines (1872), Reading the Regulations of February 19, 1861 (1873), Plowing (1876), Drought (1878), Self-Exhaustors (1882–1884), and others. In the first half of the 1880s, along with work on thematic paintings, Grigoriy Myasoedov turned to landscape motifs. In 1881, at the 9th traveling exhibition, he exhibited his canvas The Road in the Rye (canvas, oil, 65 × 145 cm, now in the State Tretyakov Gallery). Apparently, work on landscapes of this type led Myasoedov to the idea of creating a series of paintings "glorifying the power and poetry of peasant labor".

A few years after the creation of The Road in the Rye, the artist again returned to a similar motif. In a letter to landscape painter Alexander Kiselyov from January 25, 1886, Grigoriy Myasoedov reported that he had begun work on the landscape Rye Field at Sunset, which "comes out boring and does not give a proper representation". In the same letter, Myasoedov wrote: "For domestic paintings, I consider myself experienced enough in the landscape, and backgrounds can write without embarrassment, that's what I will move to". So the artist came to the idea of creating an epic canvas, not only including a landscape with a golden field of rye against the background of the summer sky but also praising the labor of peasants engaged in harvesting the bread crop. It took about a year to work on the painting Harvest Time.

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