Peasants in the Fields: Hay Harvest
Unusually, the artist has chosen a vertical – rather than horizontal – format for his landscape painting. The format allows the expanse of sky to take up most of the picture plane. Grey, silvery clouds hover threateningly against a blue-sky, and contrast with the earthy brown tones of the pyramid of industrious figures. The scene is one of haste before the rain. The highest figures in the scene load hay onto a waiting cart with pitchforks. Below a figure readies their horse, set to draw a wagon carrying dead game, while a mother and her baby sit patiently by. The low horizon and the wash of water at the foot of the sandhills in the lower right corner are indicative of the Netherlands’ northern coast. The right-hand figure in the blue jerkin boards a boat and, along with their companion, appears to be about to set off on a fishing trip – rod in hand.
The Dutch painter Philips Wouwerman (1619-68) was well-known for his landscapes and repeated this scene of people working among the sandhills. He was particularly praised for his depictions of horses, and a prominent white horse became a regular motif, as found in this painting. Wouwerman was the eldest son of the painter Pouwels Joostensz Wouwerman (c. 1580/85–1642) of Alkmaar, in the Netherlands, and his two younger brothers, Pieter Wouwerman II (1623–82) and Jan Wouwerman (1629–66), were also landscape painters. Of Pouwels’ work nothing is known, but he likely trained his son. In 1640 Wouwerman joined the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem, of which he became a vinder (agent) in 1646. At this point, the artist changed his signature from ‘PH W’ to ‘PHILS W’, and the later signature is evident in the lower left corner of this painting, below the woman’s basket. Wouwerman’s work became extremely popular in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Dulwich Picture Gallery’s founders were amassing their collection, and Peasants in the Fields: Hay Harvest was later lent to the Royal Academy three times from the Gallery in 1838, 1848 and 1921 to be copied by the artists there.