Explore the Description of this artwork, The Harvest Wagon.
Both paintings depict a group of peasants riding inside a simple wagon through a rural landscape with a collection of nearby animals. A young boy leads the wagon, while a man helps lift a young woman aboard. The painting is set in the area around Gainsborough's adopted city of Bath, where he lived for 14 years of his life. In 1995 the two museums collaborated on a joint show that displayed the two versions side by side, first on display in England and then in Canada.
The two paintings of a similar subject done some seventeen years apart show the evolution of Gainsborough as an artist. The later painting is more sedate, the figures more composed and less excited. The Gainsborough scholar Hugh Besley sees landscape, people, and animals as more unified in the later work. He also sees more influence of Rubens on Gainsborough's style and technique, particularly of Rubens's The Descent from the Cross. The woman ascending to the wagon shows a motion opposite to Christ's. Christina Payne has commented on some of the symbolism in the 1784 work, noting that the broken pitcher placed in front of the pregnant passenger may be a symbol of virginity. The earlier painting is also far more intimate to the artist as the women in the wagon are portraits of Gainsborough's own daughters, Mary and Margaret.
The Descent from the Cross Bath