Scanned from a slide by Bill Prochazka. Photographed by Scott Wolff. Color corrected by Pat C…

Harvest

Artist George Biddle (American, 1885-1973)

Date1932

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions61 x 80 in. (154.9 x 203.2 cm)
Overall, Frame: 61 3/4 x 81 3/4 in. (156.8 x 207.6 cm)

ClassificationsModern art

Credit LineGift of the Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.

Object number71.833

Terms

People
Farming
Bulls
Baby
Sheep
Goat
Yellow
White
Green
Brown
Black
Red
South Carolina
Italy

On View

Not on view

DescriptionThis is a large oil on canvas painting. There are four figures on the right, in the foreground: two women, one with a baby on her lap, and a man sit on a triangle of grass in between a tree and some boulders. In the mid-ground, a man is plowing with two white oxen. Behind him are three laborers all in similar stance, bent at the hip, working in the fields. The sky is blue with angular clouds, not unlike waves. The palette hues are soft and blend into each other at some points, while other areas are more linear.

Label TextGeorge Biddle American (1885-1973) Harvest, 1932 Oil on canvas Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.833 In 1930 George and Ira Gershwin asked George Biddle to illustrate the libretto for their folk opera Porgy and Bess. That spring he traveled to Charleston, South Carolina, to make drawings of the local residents. From there, Biddle went on to Italy where he made nearly fifty oil paintings based on his South Carolina drawings. Among the largest and most successful of these is the mural-sized Harvest, a work that signals the beginning of his mature style. In a 1932 review in the New York Times, Edward Alden Jewell singled out the work for special praise, calling it "a splendidly organized picture," and praising its "essential humanity" and distinctive figure style. Born into one of Philadelphia's richest and most prominent families, Biddle used his art to promote the cause of America's common man during the Great Depression. Struck by the artistic power and political force of Diego Rivera's revolutionary Mexican murals, in 1933 he petitioned President Franklin Roosevelt (a friend and former schoolmate) to inaugurate a federally sponsored program of mural painting. The resulting Public Works of Art Project was the first of a series of government-funded relief projects that fostered American Scene painting and supported many artists through the worst years of the crisis.