The Harvest Wagon By Thomas Gainsborough: A Narrative Of English Country Life

Thomas Gainsborough (1727 – 1788) was an artist who, much like his influencers and contemporaries, was a pioneer in the technical use of light to not only give effect and drama to a painting, but to give it a sense of narrative as well.

Born in Suffolk, Gainsborough’s talents took him to London for his education and eventually, to Bath for his career; however, his upbringing in the country clearly influenced his unique interpretations of nature and an individual’s place within it. Known as a portraitist and landscape master, Gainsborough’s dramatic style favoring ideals and emotions over exacting replication — gives layered meaning to even the simplest representations of the English countryside. “So many of his landscape paintings and drawings evoke a strong sense of place and convey an emotional attachment to the natural world that was familiar to him”. This is readily apparent in the oil on canvas entitled “The Harvest Wagon, ” housed at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Created in 1784/85, the vibrant and idyllic scene contrasts a family gathering in their wagon after a day of gathering their harvest with the distant hills and sky of the magnificent countryside in the background.

The characters inhabiting the scene are four women, two men, and two children, bathed in the glow of what must be a strong autumn sunset. Horses are lined up and ready to begin their journey; a dog clamours behind the wagon as sheep inhabit both the foreground and the distant background. One of the men leads the team pulling the wagon while the other is helping the last passenger into the cart. Everyone in the scene seems content with their day’s work, as one child is cradled on the lap of a woman and the other sits on their own on the edge of the vehicle, peering at a family member. As the eye follows the road into the distant foothills, more sheep form barely discernible shapes as the bright, warm tones of the family dissolve into the green of the grass and trees and the slate blue and grey of the sky and clouds. In this range of palette and light, Gainsborough evokes a sense of the lives of those populating the painting, well beyond the moment captured.

The focal point of the painting is the child sitting on his own at the rear edge of the wagon, set in the left and lower thirds of the scene. His curly blonde locks and bright, pale skin are the painting’s singular bright spot, along with the white folds of his garment. The child, engaged in an interaction with the woman sitting alongside, is nestled in hay with bags of produce around it. As bright as the child is, the light that illuminates his innocence and inquisitiveness fades quite quickly, as the woman beside him, while also bathed in a warm glow, is not nearly as luminescent; in fact, even the child’s own limbs are shadowed. The other child, grasping at the clothes of another woman and balanced precariously on her lap, has a bright face but is otherwise caught in the encroaching darkness. The adult on which he sits, as well as a third woman behind, are almost indistinguishable, with mere hints of facial features, limbs, and clothes apparent. In this way, Gainsborough is drawing attention to the purity and love within the interaction between the child and adult, a scene evoking much tenderness in its warm colours and pleasant aura: “Gainsborough was evidently an artist who was acutely sensitive to the drama of light”.

This pair is also contrasted with the other prominent pair in the scene. Just behind the child, a man is about to lift the fourth woman into the wagon, reaching down from inside as she reaches up to him. These adults strike much more careworn poses, with the man hunched over, his back stooped towards the woman and his face darkened in full shadow. She seems tired, almost hollow-eyed, and her dark hair is messy and strewn under her kerchief. Their clothes are darker, in earthy tones of blue, ochre, beige, and grey. It indicates that they are the adult nucleus of this family, and that their labour has been greater than that of the others, who seem to be more tasked with child and animal care, such as the male figure at the head of the team of horses; he is almost indistinguishable from the landscape around him, if not for the simple brushstrokes that outline his form. The further away the elements of the painting are from its focus on the child, the less precise, defined and bright they are, telling a story of innocence to experience, from clarity to obscurity. In his use of light, colour and form, Gainsborough shows “a restless experimentation in defiance of academic distinctions between sketch and completed work and… an acute sense of the importance of lighting and optics”.

The landscape itself — taking up the upper half and rightmost third of the painting — also adheres to the dramatic focal lighting around the wagon itself, trailing off into less dramatic and precise formations towards the distance. Furthest to the left is a large tree and outcrop of rocks that provide an inner frame of the family scene, seemingly sheltering the individuals from a possible storm looming in the sky. Their texture is almost tactile, with cuts of stone, ridges of bark, and individual leaves reflecting the same mythical sunset shining on the child. Following the road to the distance, the sheep blend into the earth without the blessing of the light, and leaves on the trees no longer shimmer as individuals but blend together into larger, less-formed strokes. The hills in the distance take on the tones of the sky and clouds, which are large and dramatic: “he dissolves the world into a fantastic surface, subduing its people into a subjective place of feathery brushstrokes and trees like bath foam”.

The clouds themselves take on the forms of the trees, with the largest and darkest following the shape of the road ahead of the wagon. The story forms: after a long day working in the fields, the family pulls together to take their harvest home and have their rest before they are caught in a violent storm, the toil and urgency reflected in the posture of the main adult pair, and the repose to come reflected in those settled into the cart. In this way, Gainsborough uses light, colour, and shape/form build in “The Harvest Wagon, ” an idyllic but also a truthful narrative of English country life.