The Grape Harvest

Léon-Augustin Lhermitte

1884 · Oil on canvas · European Paintings

"[The figures] have the healthy, strong beauty of the land on which they live; warm blood runs through their veins and the tingle of life itself passes over their skin, tanned by the sun," declared one critic when Lhermitte exhibited this picture at the 1884 Salon. The artist’s fourth large-scale, heroicizing scene of rustic laborers in as many years, it cemented his reputation as a painter of modern rural life. For admirers such as Van Gogh, Lhermitte’s masterful and sympathetic presentation of the working peasants made him a "genius on a par with that of Millet."

Artist

Léon-Augustin Lhermitte

Date

1884

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

European Paintings

Credit line

Gift of William Schaus, 1887